Laser Megajoule performance status.

The Laser Megajoule (LMJ) is among the most energetic inertial confinement fusion laser facilities in the world, together with the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the USA. The construction of the facility began back in 2003, and the first photons were emitted by the laser bundle #28 in 2014. Today, 11 laser bundles consisting of 88 large aperture 0.

Impact of compression grating phase modulations on beam over-intensities and downstream optics on PETAL facility.

Chirped pulse amplification has been widely implemented in high power laser chains. It consists of a set of diffraction gratings used to stretch and compress short laser pulses. In the case of high power laser chains, the compression stage is followed by the transport mirror in order to carry the laser beam to its final target.

Design of PETAL multipetawatt high-energy laser front end based on optical parametric chirped pulse amplification.

We report on a single shot optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier designed to seed the Petawatt Aquitaine Laser on the Laser Integration Line facility multipetawatt high-energy laser. The scheme is based on a stretched signal pulse at 1053 nm amplified with 20% conversion efficiency by a monomode pump pulse at 527 nm. The homemade pump laser is able to deliver a single shot beam with a square flat top spatial profile and programmable temporal shape.

Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier and spatiotemporal shaping for a petawatt laser.

We present a degenerate noncollinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier pumped by a high-energy, diode-pumped Nd:Glass regenerative amplifier delivering monomode pulses at 527 nm. The spatial mode shaping of the pump pulses is achieved with a diffractive laser cavity element, and temporal pulse shaping makes use of an electro-optic modulator and an arbitrary electrical waveform generator. Amplification at gain saturation achieves tailoring of the signal pulses.