Optics for Petawatt Pulses

As the home of the world’s largest and most energetic laser, Lawrence Livermore regularly stands at the forefront of high-energy-density physics research. The Laboratory’s laser systems create extreme experimental conditions by exploiting a simple relationship: power is defined as energy transfer over time. By constraining a large burst of energy to a nearly instantaneous time frame, power grows enormously, allowing researchers to briefly mimic the intense environments of solar interiors and black hole horizons.

Through the Nobel Prize–winning method known as chirped-pulse amplification (CPA), scientists can spectrally and temporally stretch a short initial laser pulse, energize it, and finally compress it once again to produce a concentrated, high- energy blast. CPA warps and redirects light using a series of diffraction gratings—multilayer reflective panels composed of a base substrate and stacked films of dielectric material.  Read more...