Optics Continuum aims to publish peer-reviewed research articles from the broad optics and photonics community that have high technical accuracy, high scientific rigor, and high presentation quality without judgment of impact or significance. Optics Continuum considers submissions from researchers and engineers at all stages of their careers and from all regions of the world in order to move science forward with its inclusive criteria and transparent review option.

We are delighted to introduce a new Best Paper Prize and recognize the inaugural winning paper. The prize recognizes the authors of a paper that a committee of Optics Continuum editors judged to be outstanding. The selection committee consisted of ourselves and associate editors Drs. Ho Wai (Howard) Lee, Ching-Cherng Sun, and Gualtiero Nunzi Conti, who represent a range of topics across the scope of Optics Continuum. The committee was responsible for identifying a winner from among the highlighted, self-nominated, community-nominated, and frequently-downloaded papers published in 2022 based on criteria including the technical accuracy, scientific rigor, and presentation quality of the papers.

The inaugural winning article, “Thin-disk multipass amplifier delivering sub-400 fs pulses with excellent beam quality at an average power of 1 kW,” was published by André Loescher, Florian Bienert, Christoph Röcker, Thomas Graf, Martin Gorjan, Jürg Aus der Au, and Marwan Abdou Ahmed from Universität Stuttgart, Germany and Spectra-Physics, Austria [1]. The paper reports on an improved multipass amplifier design, enabling the amplification of ultrashort pulses with excellent beam quality (M2 < 1.2) and an average output power of more than 1 kW, corresponding to a peak power of 2.5 GW. Also, their developed amplifier system shows an excellent power stability of 0.16% RMS over a duration of more than two hours. The authors demonstrate the excellent performance of the laser technology by employing a single thin-disk amplifier with a simple multipass geometry with a strict attitude. The committee unanimously selected this paper due to the exceptional thoroughness of the study, the accuracy of the work, and the clarity of the presentation.

André Loescher

The lead author, André Loescher, is currently a laser scientist at the Institut für Strahlwerkzeuge (IFSW), University of Stuttgart, Germany. He earned his Diploma in Physics with a diploma thesis in solid state physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. André works on topics in the fields of thin-disk based high power laser amplifiers, focusing on ultrashort laser pulse amplification, vector beams, and frequency conversion.

Please join us in congratulating André Loescher and his colleagues on their selection as the winners of the 2022 Optics Continuum Best Paper Prize!