Abstract

With a low repetition rate petawatt-class laser system, effective data collection requires repeatable laser performance, and even more importantly experimenters need to accurately know the parameters of each laser pulse. The presentation describes challenges of measuring ultrahigh peak power laser pulse parameters, how we address them, and the performance variance achieved on the Texas Petawatt Laser. Pulse duration, profile, spectrum, and energy, plus system prepulse contrast are discussed. Article not available.

© 2014 Optical Society of America