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Design and Verification of a Multi-Terawatt Ti-Sapphire Femtosecond Laser System

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Date Issued:
2017
Abstract/Description:
Ultrashort pulse lasers are well-established in the scientific community due to the wide range of applications facilitated by their extreme intensities and broad bandwidth capabilities. This thesis will primarily present the design for the Mobile Ultrafast High Energy Laser Facility (MU-HELF) for use in outdoor atmospheric propagation experiments under development at the Laser Plasma Laboratory at UCF. The system is a 100fs 500 mJ Ti-Sapphire Chirped-Pulse Amplification (CPA) laser, operating at 10 Hz. Some background on the generation of very high intensity optical pulses is also presented, alongside an overview of the physics of filamentation. As part of the design of MU-HELF, this thesis focuses on a novel approach to manage the large amount of dispersion required to stretch the pulse for CPA utilizing a custom nonlinear chirped Volume Bragg Grating (VBG) as a pulse stretcher matched to a traditional Treacy compressor. As part of this thesis, the dispersion of the CPA system was thoroughly modeled to properly design the chirped VBG and fabricated VBGs were characterized using a scanning spectral interferometry technique. The work demonstrates the feasibility of using a compact monolithic pulse stretcher in terawatt class CPA lasers.
Title: Design and Verification of a Multi-Terawatt Ti-Sapphire Femtosecond Laser System.
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Name(s): Roumayah, Patrick, Author
Shah, Lawrence, Committee Chair
Richardson, Martin, Committee CoChair
Amezcua Correa, Rodrigo, Committee Member
University of Central Florida, Degree Grantor
Type of Resource: text
Date Issued: 2017
Publisher: University of Central Florida
Language(s): English
Abstract/Description: Ultrashort pulse lasers are well-established in the scientific community due to the wide range of applications facilitated by their extreme intensities and broad bandwidth capabilities. This thesis will primarily present the design for the Mobile Ultrafast High Energy Laser Facility (MU-HELF) for use in outdoor atmospheric propagation experiments under development at the Laser Plasma Laboratory at UCF. The system is a 100fs 500 mJ Ti-Sapphire Chirped-Pulse Amplification (CPA) laser, operating at 10 Hz. Some background on the generation of very high intensity optical pulses is also presented, alongside an overview of the physics of filamentation. As part of the design of MU-HELF, this thesis focuses on a novel approach to manage the large amount of dispersion required to stretch the pulse for CPA utilizing a custom nonlinear chirped Volume Bragg Grating (VBG) as a pulse stretcher matched to a traditional Treacy compressor. As part of this thesis, the dispersion of the CPA system was thoroughly modeled to properly design the chirped VBG and fabricated VBGs were characterized using a scanning spectral interferometry technique. The work demonstrates the feasibility of using a compact monolithic pulse stretcher in terawatt class CPA lasers.
Identifier: CFE0006651 (IID), ucf:51241 (fedora)
Note(s): 2017-05-01
M.S.
Optics and Photonics, Optics and Photonics
Masters
This record was generated from author submitted information.
Subject(s): Filamentation -- Mobile Filamentation System -- Short Pulse Laser -- High Energy Laser -- Chirped Pulse Amplification
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006651
Restrictions on Access: public 2017-05-15
Host Institution: UCF

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