We report high-energy, high-efficiency second harmonic generation in a near-infrared all-solid-state burst-mode picosecond laser at a repetition rate of 1 kHz with four pulses per burst using a type-I noncritical phase-matching lithium triborate crystal. The pulses in each burst have the same time delay (${\sim}1~\text{ns}$), the same pulse duration (${\sim}100~\text{ps}$) and different relative amplitudes that can be adjusted separately. A mode-locked beam from a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror is pulse-stretched, split into seed pulses and injected into a Nd:YAG regenerative amplifier. After the beam is reshaped by aspheric lenses, a two-stage master oscillator power amplifier and 4f imaging systems are applied to obtain a high power of ${\sim}100~\text{W}$. The 532 nm green laser has a maximum conversion efficiency of 68%, an average power of up to 50 W and a beam quality factor $M^{2}$ of 3.5.

We report on the successful demonstration of a 150 J nanosecond pulsed cryogenic gas cooled, diode-pumped multi-slab Yb:YAG laser operating at 1 Hz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest energy ever recorded for a diode-pumped laser system.

With the latest configuration, the Ti:Sa laser system ARCTURUS (Düsseldorf University, Germany) operates with a double-chirped pulse amplification (CPA) architecture delivering pulses with an energy of 7 J before compression in each of the two high-power beams. By the implementation of a plasma mirror system, the intrinsic laser contrast is enhanced up to $10^{-12}$ on a time scale of hundreds of picoseconds, before the main peak. The laser system has been used in various configurations for advanced experiments and different studies have been carried out employing the high-power laser beams as a single, high-intensity interaction beam ($I\approx 10^{20}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$), in dual- and multi-beam configurations or in a pump–probe arrangement.

The properties of a series of phase measurement techniques, including interferometry, the Hartmann–Shack wavefront sensor, the knife-edge technique, and coherent diffraction imaging, are summarized and their performance in high power laser applications is compared. The advantages, disadvantages, and application ranges of each technique are discussed.

In order to understand the transport of fast electrons within solid density targets driven by an optical high power laser, we have numerically investigated the dynamics and structure of strong self-generated magnetic fields in such experiments. Here we present a systematic study of the bulk magnetic field generation due to the ponderomotive current, Weibel-like instability and resistivity gradient between two solid layers. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we observe the effect of varying the laser and target parameters, including laser intensity, focal size, incident angle, preplasma scale length, target thickness and material and experimental geometry. The simulation results suggest that the strongest magnetic field is generated with laser incident angles and preplasma scale lengths that maximize laser absorption efficiency. The recent commissioning of experimental platforms equipped with both optical high power laser and X-ray free electron laser (XFEL), such as European XFEL-HED, LCLS-MEC and SACLA beamlines, provides unprecedented opportunities to probe the self-generated bulk magnetic field by X-ray polarimetry via Faraday rotation with simultaneous high spatial and temporal resolution. We expect that this systematic numerical investigation will pave the way to design and optimize near future experimental setups to probe the magnetic fields in such experimental platforms.

This study develops a Yb:KGW dual-crystal based regenerative amplifier. The thermal lensing and gain-narrowing effects are compensated by the dual-crystal configuration. Sub-nanojoule pulses are amplified to 1.5 mJ with 9 nm spectral bandwidth and 1 kHz repetition rate using chirped pulse amplification technology. Consequently, 1.2 mJ pulses with a pulse duration of 227 fs are obtained after compression. Thanks to the cavity design, the output laser was a near diffraction limited beam with M2 around 1.1. The amplifier has the potential to boost energy above 2 mJ after compression and act as a front end for a future kilohertz terawatt-class diode-pumped Yb:KGW laser system.

Owing to their ultra-high accelerating gradients, combined with injection inside micrometer-scale accelerating wakefield buckets, plasma-based accelerators hold great potential to drive a new generation of free-electron lasers (FELs). Indeed, the first demonstration of plasma-driven FEL gain was reported recently, representing a major milestone for the field. Several groups around the world are pursuing these novel light sources, with methodology varying in the use of wakefield driver (laser-driven or beam-driven), plasma structure, phase-space manipulation, beamline design, and undulator technology, among others. This paper presents our best attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the global community efforts towards plasma-based FEL research and development.

Compared with traditional uniform fibers, tapered fiber has numerous unique advantages, such as larger mode area, higher pump absorption, suppression to nonlinear effects, and maintaining good beam quality. In this manuscript, we have constructed an all-fiberized fiber amplifier which is based on a piece of ytterbium-doped tapered double-clad fiber (T-DCF). The fiber amplifier is operated under continuous wave (CW) regime at 1080 nm wavelength. The $M^{2}$ factor of the amplifier at 1.39 kW output power is ${\sim}1.8$. The maximum output power of the system reached 1.47 kW, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the highest output power of long tapered fiber based fiber laser system. Our result successfully verifies the potential of power scalability and all-fiberized capability of long tapered fiber, and the performance of our system can be further enhanced by fiber design optimization.

As a promising new way to generate a controllable strong magnetic field, laser-driven magnetic coils have attracted interest in many research fields. In 2013, a kilotesla level magnetic field was achieved at the Gekko XII laser facility with a capacitor–coil target. A similar approach has been adopted in a number of laboratories, with a variety of targets of different shapes. The peak strength of the magnetic field varies from a few tesla to kilotesla, with different spatio-temporal ranges. The differences are determined by the target geometry and the parameters of the incident laser. Here we present a review of the results of recent experimental studies of laser-driven magnetic field generation, as well as a discussion of the diagnostic techniques required for such rapidly changing magnetic fields. As an extension of the magnetic field generation, some applications are discussed.

The power scaling on mid-infrared Raman fibre lasers (RFLs) is in demand for applications in health, environment and security. In this paper, we present the simulated laser behaviours of the tellurite glass RFLs pumped by 300-W Tm-doped fibre lasers (TDFLs) at $2~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ for the first time. By combining the advantages of the TDFLs and tellurite fibre, the output power at $2.35~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ has reached over hundreds of watts by first-order Raman shift. Moreover, the cascaded RFLs have been demonstrated with a wavelength extension greater than $3~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ and output power of tens of watts. To maximize the output power and the slope efficiency of the RFLs, we further analyse the interaction between the Raman gain and cavity loss, which are determined by fibre length and output reflectance of the laser cavity.

We present a new experimental platform for studying laboratory astrophysics that combines a high-intensity, high-repetition-rate laser with the Large Plasma Device at the University of California, Los Angeles. To demonstrate the utility of this platform, we show the first results of volumetric, highly repeatable magnetic field and electrostatic potential measurements, along with derived quantities of electric field, charge density and current density, of the interaction between a super-Alfvénic laser-produced plasma and an ambient, magnetized plasma.

The development, the underlying technology and the current status of the fully diode-pumped solid-state laser system POLARIS is reviewed. Currently, the POLARIS system delivers 4 J energy, 144 fs long laser pulses with an ultra-high temporal contrast of $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}5\times 10^{12}$ for the ASE, which is achieved using a so-called double chirped-pulse amplification scheme and cross-polarized wave generation pulse cleaning. By tightly focusing, the peak intensity exceeds $3.5\times 10^{20}\ \mathrm{W\ cm}^{-2}$. These parameters predestine POLARIS as a scientific tool well suited for sophisticated experiments, as exemplified by presenting measurements of accelerated proton energies. Recently, an additional amplifier has been added to the laser chain. In the ramp-up phase, pulses from this amplifier are not yet compressed and have not yet reached the anticipated energy. Nevertheless, an output energy of $16.6\ \mathrm{J}$ has been achieved so far.

We report a 2 kW all-fiberized Raman fiber amplifier with efficient brightness enhancement based on the graded-index fiber. The maximum power output reaches up to 2.034 kW centered at 1130 nm, with a conversion efficiency of 79.35% with respect to the injected pump power. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest conversion efficiency obtained for any Raman laser system using graded-index fiber. An optimized fiber combiner adopting graded-index fiber as the pigtail fiber was fabricated, enabling the preservation of the seeding brightness in the core-pumped Raman fiber amplifier, and further enhancing the ultimate brightness of the output laser after amplification. At the maximum power output, the beam quality parameter M2 is 2.8, corresponding to a signal-to-pump brightness enhancement factor of 11.2. As far as we know, we obtain the highest brightness enhancement among Raman fiber lasers of over 100 W, and the best beam quality for graded-index Raman fiber lasers of over 150 W.

In this paper, we reported both the experimental demonstration and theoretical analysis of a Raman fiber laser based on a master oscillator–power amplifier configuration. The Raman fiber laser adopted the dual-wavelength bidirectional pumping configuration, utilizing 976 nm laser diodes and 1018 nm fiber lasers as the pump sources. A 60-m-long $25/400~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ ytterbium-doped fiber was used to convert the power from 1070 to 1124 nm, realizing a maximum power output of 3.7 kW with a 3 dB spectral width of 6.8 nm. Moreover, we developed a multi-frequency model taking into consideration the Raman gain spectrum and amplified spontaneous emission. The calculated spectral broadening of both the forward and backward laser was in good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, a 1.5 kW, 1183 nm second-order Raman fiber laser was further experimentally demonstrated by the addition of a 70-m-long germanium-doped passive fiber.

Stimulated Raman-scattering-based lasers provide an effective way to achieve wavelength conversion. However, thermally induced beam degradation is a notorious obstacle to power scaling and it also limits the applicable range where high output beam quality is needed. Considerable research efforts have been devoted to developing Raman materials, with diamond being a promising candidate to acquire wavelength-versatile, high-power, and high-quality output beam owing to its excellent thermal properties, high Raman gain coefficient, and wide transmission range. The diamond Raman resonator is usually designed as an external-cavity pumped structure, which can easily eliminate the negative thermal effects of intracavity laser crystals. Diamond Raman converters also provide an approach to improve the beam quality owing to the Raman cleanup effect. This review outlines the research status of diamond Raman lasers, including beam quality optimization, Raman conversion, thermal effects, and prospects for future development directions.

A high-power, Joule-class, nanosecond temporally shaped multi-pass ring laser amplifier system with two neodymium-doped phosphate glass (Nd:glass) laser heads is demonstrated. The laser amplifier system consists of three parts: an all-fiber structure seeder, a diode-pumped Nd:glass regenerative amplifier and a multi-pass ring amplifier, where the thermally induced depolarization of two laser heads is studied experimentally and theoretically. Following the injection of a square pulse with the pulse energy of 0.9 mJ and pulse width of 6 ns, a 0.969-J high-energy laser pulse at 1 Hz was generated, which had the ability to change the waveform arbitrarily, based on the all-fiber structure front end. The experimental results show that the proposed laser system is promising to be adopted in the preamplifier of high-power laser facilities.

High power superfluorescent fiber sources (SFSs), which could find wide applications in many fields such as middle infrared laser generation, Raman fiber laser pumping and spectral beam combination, have experienced a flourishing time in recent years for its unique properties, such as short coherence length and high temporal stability. The challenge for performance scalability of powerful SFS mainly lies on the physical issues including parasitic laser oscillation and modal instability (MI). In this contribution, by employing in-band pumping avenue and high-order transverse-mode management, we explore a high power SFS with record power, near-diffraction-limited beam quality and spectral manipulation flexibility. An ultimate output power of 3.14 kW can be obtained with high temporal stability and a beam quality of $M^{2}=1.59$ for the amplified light. Furthermore, the dynamics of spectral evolutions, including red-shifting of central wavelength and unsymmetrical broadening in spectral wings, of the main amplifier with different seed linewidths are investigated contrastively. Benefiting from the unique high pump brightness and high MI threshold of in-band pumping scheme, the demonstrated system also manifests promising performance scaling potential.

We have developed a new radiography setup with a short-pulse laser-driven x-ray source. Using a radiography axis perpendicular to both long- and short-pulse lasers allowed optimizing the incident angle of the short-pulse laser on the x-ray source target. The setup has been tested with various x-ray source target materials and different laser wavelengths. Signal to noise ratios are presented as well as achieved spatial resolutions. The high quality of our technique is illustrated on a plasma flow radiograph obtained during a laboratory astrophysics experiment on POLARs.

X/γ-rays have many potential applications in laboratory astrophysics and particle physics. Although several methods have been proposed for generating electron, positron, and X/γ-photon beams with angular momentum (AM), the generation of ultra-intense brilliant γ-rays is still challenging. Here, we present an all-optical scheme to generate a high-energy γ-photon beam with large beam angular momentum (BAM), small divergence, and high brilliance. In the first stage, a circularly polarized laser pulse with intensity of 1022 W/cm2 irradiates a micro-channel target, drags out electrons from the channel wall, and accelerates them to high energies via the longitudinal electric fields. During the process, the laser transfers its spin angular momentum (SAM) to the electrons’ orbital angular momentum (OAM). In the second stage, the drive pulse is reflected by the attached fan-foil and a vortex laser pulse is thus formed. In the third stage, the energetic electrons collide head-on with the reflected vortex pulse and transfer their AM to the γ-photons via nonlinear Compton scattering. Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that the peak brilliance of the γ-ray beam is $\sim 1{0}^{22}$ photons·s–1·mm–2·mrad–2 per 0.1% bandwidth at 1 MeV with a peak instantaneous power of 25 TW and averaged BAM of $1{0}^6\hslash$/photon. The AM conversion efficiency from laser to the γ-photons is unprecedentedly 0.67%.

We present the design and experiment of a broadband optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier (OPCPA) which provides high conversion efficiency and good beam quality at 808 nm wavelength. Using a three-dimensional spatial and temporal numerical model, several design considerations necessary to achieve high conversion efficiency, good beam quality and good output stability are discussed. To improve the conversion efficiency and broaden the amplified signal bandwidth simultaneously, the nonlinear crystal length and OPCPA parameters are analyzed and optimized with the concept of dissipating amplified idler between optical parametric amplification (OPA) of two crystals configuration. In the experiment, an amplifier consisting of two OPCPA stages of ‘L’ type configuration was demonstrated by using the optimized parameters. An amplified signal energy of 160 mJ was achieved with a total pump-to-signal efficiency of 35% (43% efficiency for the OPCPA stage 2). The output bandwidth of signal pulse reached 80 nm and the signal pulse was compressed to 24 fs. The energy stability reached 1.67% RMS at 3% pump energy variation. The optimized OPCPA amplifier operates at a repetition rate of 1 Hz and is used as a front-end injection for the main amplifier of SG-II 5PW laser facility.