Technology Development for Ultra-Intense OPCPA Systems

Ultra-intense laser systems are being developed by a number of institutions to use the full potential of deuterated potassium dihydrogen phosphate (DKDP) for high-energy optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) [1] – [3] . Noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers (NOPA’s) made of large DKDP crystals produce broadband gain for supporting pulses as short as 10 fs. Although OPCPA is now routinely used as a broadband front-end technology, scaling OPCPA to >100 J is still an active area of research. This paper reports on the MTW-OPAL Laser System [4] , a mid-scale optical parametric amplifier line pumped by the Multi-Terawatt laser, where the long-term goal is building EP-OPAL, a femtosecond-kilojoule system to add to the Omega Laser Facility.