Real time pulse characterization for a terawatt laser facility

Abstract

The technique of chirped pulse amplification has conveniently enabled the development of Joule-class laser facilities delivering terawatt levels of power with a single shot beam on target. In powerful systems like these, beam metrology for pulse charaterization is crucial for maintaining a high level of confidence in generating high intensity laser shots. Optical diagnostics for monitoring beam features such as spectra, beam profile, energy and also measuring dispersion and the compressed pulse duration are necessary. Spatio-temporal couplings such as angular dispersion caused by the presence of chromatic aberrations can distort the pulse energy and duration on target and affect laser matter interactions. A pulsefront- tilt (PFT) diagnostic utilizing a diffractive optic for determining angular dispersion and misalignment at shorter bandwidths is designed and implemented for our laser facility, along-with a homemade single shot auto-correlator for measuring pulse duration after the grating compressor. For real-time monitoring of the laser facility, a smart dashboard protocol using openBIS ELN (Electronics Lab Notebook) is administered to enable regular and uninterrupted saving of raw data which is integrated into the local dashboard for visualization and data analysis.