Greater than five-order-of-magnitude post-compression temporal contrast improvement with an ionization plasma grating

2024/03/17 by Matthew R. Edwards, Edwards, Matthew R., N. M. Fasano +16 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Optical Systems and Laser Technology #Optics (physics.optics) #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.11275

openalex publication_date 2024/03/17 · openalex created_date 2024/03/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

High-intensity lasers require suppression of prepulses and other non-ideal temporal structure to avoid target disruption before the arrival of the main pulse. To address this, we demonstrate that ionization gratings act as a controllable optical switch for high-power light with a temporal contrast improvement of at least 3×10⁵ and a switching time less than 500 fs. We also show that a grating system can run for hours at 10 Hz without degradation. The contrast improvement from an ionization grating compares favorably to that achievable with plasma mirrors.

Cited by

• Holographic Gaseous Lenses for High-Power Lasers
• Formation of axially modulated plasma strings by filamentation of interfering femtosecond Bessel beams

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