Observation of Laser Power Amplification in a Self-Injecting Laser Wakefield Accelerator.

We report on the depletion and power amplification of the driving laser pulse in a strongly driven laser wakefield accelerator. Simultaneous measurement of the transmitted pulse energy and temporal shape indicate an increase in peak power from 187±11  TW to a maximum of 318±12  TW after 13 mm of propagation in a plasma density of 0.9×10^{18}  cm^{-3}.

100 J-level nanosecond pulsed diode pumped solid state laser.

We report on the successful demonstration of a 100 J-level, diode pumped solid state laser based on cryogenic gas cooled, multi-slab ceramic Yb:YAG amplifier technology. When operated at 175 K, the system delivered a pulse energy of 107 J at a 1 Hz repetition rate and 10 ns pulse duration, pumped by 506 J of diode energy at 940 nm, corresponding to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 21%. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the highest energy obtained from a nanosecond pulsed diode pumped solid state laser.

Compact laser accelerators for X-ray phase-contrast imaging.

Advances in X-ray imaging techniques have been driven by advances in novel X-ray sources. The latest fourth-generation X-ray sources can boast large photon fluxes at unprecedented brightness. However, the large size of these facilities means that these sources are not available for everyday applications.

Development of a novel large bandwidth front-end system for high peak power OPCPA systems.

We present the development of a laser system capable of generating bandwidths sufficient to support a sub 30 fs pulse at 910 nm. These pulses have been amplified to 500 mJ of energy at 2 Hz in two stages. The contrast measurements show that the initial seed is clean and suggests that the close in contrast is limited by the evaluation stretcher and compressor.