Front‐end of the ILE Project: A design study for a 100 mJ sub‐10 fs laser
Résumé
Within the development of the ILE French project aiming on the building of a 10 PW, 150 J∕15 fs laser chain (named APOLLON), a design study for a sub‐10‐fs, 100 mJ pilot laser operating at 800 nm have been conceived. This system is based on a non‐collinear optical parametric chirped‐pulse amplification (NOPCPA) of the spectrally broadened and compressed pulses of a Ti:Sapphire laser system providing 1.5‐mJ, 25‐fs, pumped at 515 nm by a high‐energy diode‐pumped Yb‐doped‐based laser chain. The envisioned system, based on a novel combined architecture of picosecond and nanosecond NOPCPA stages, will finally deliver carrier envelope phased (CEP) stabilized 1 ns pulses (compressible to less than 10 fs) at 800 nm with 100 mJ energy and at a repetition rate in the range of 10-100 Hz.