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arXiv · 2403.11275

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

Matthew R. Edwards·Nicholas M. Fasano·Andreas M. Giakas·Michelle M. Wang·Jesse Griff-McMahon·Anatoli Morozov·Victor M. Perez-Ramirez·Nuno Lemos·Pierre Michel·Julia M. Mikhailova
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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 $3\times10^5$ 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.

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Matthew R. Edwards, Nicholas M. Fasano, Andreas M. Giakas, Michelle M. Wang, Jesse Griff-McMahon, Anatoli Morozov, Victor M. Perez-Ramirez, Nuno Lemos, Pierre Michel, Julia M. Mikhailova. 2024-03-17. Greater than five-order-of-magnitude post-compression temporal contrast improvement with an ionization plasma grating. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.11275

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