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Upgraded Asterix iodine Iaser

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Abstract

The new Asterix IV high-power iodine laser now under installation at the Max-Planck institute for Quantum Optics (MPQ), Garching, Is projected to deliver in one beam an output energy of up to 2 kJ and a maximum power of 7 TW. This laser consists of the following components: two oscillators provide the required output pulse width variability ranging from 0.1 to 2 ns. The pulse will be amplified by six amplifiers, the largest of which has an aperture of 29 cm and an active length of 8 m. To protect laser components from light retroreflected from the target, two Faraday rotators are required. For prepulse reduction and amplifier decoupling two Pockels cells and two saturable absorbers are installed. An image relaying system serves for the beam expansion between adjacent amplifiers and for the suppression of Fresnel diffraction. This system is combined with spatial filtering, when at pulse lengths shorter than 0.8 ns the beam breakup integral starts to exceed at the end amplifier by a value of 4. Measurements performed at MPQ had an enhancement of the edges of the intensity profile in the image plane, when it is imaged through a saturated amplifier.1 Measures for suppressing this edge enhancement and yielding a homogeneous intensity profile are discussed. The results already obtained with the first three amplifiers of the Asterix IV laser are described.

© 1986 Optical Society of America

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