Progress in the growth of large scale Ti:sapphire crystals by the heat exchanger method (HEM) for petawatt class lasers

In modelocked laser systems, the shortest possible pulse width is determined by the Fourier transform of the spectral bandwidth of the pulse; the wider the spectral bandwidth, the shorter the pulse. Titanium-doped sapphire (Ti:sapphire) offers the widest gain bandwidth of any currently available laser gain material, enabling systems to deliver pulse widths shorter than 10 fs (10(-14) s). Because of the short pulse durations, the peak power can be extremely high, and therefore Ti:sapphire lasers have been at the forefront of research into ultrafast, ultrahigh power lasers. These intense ultrashort laser pulses are the light source for fundamental studies of light-matter interactions. Interesting scientific results have been achieved with these lasers in the fields of high order harmonic and short pulse X-ray generations, high density plasmas, relativistic acceleration, relativistic nonlinear optics, time resolved X-ray diffraction with unprecedented time resolution and others. Researchers have recently achieved near petawatt (10(15) W) peak power laser operation using large diameter Ti:sapphire amplifiers, and are developing higher power lasers for research into high energy physics. However, the saturation fluence of the Ti:sapphire gain medium is limited to about 1 J/cm(2). Thus, continued scale up in peak laser energy requires the scale up of high-quality Ti:sapphire crystals for laser amplifiers. Current demand is for 100 mm diameter crystals, and this requirement is projected to grow up to 250 mm diameter crystals in a few years. To address this technological bottleneck, Crystal Systems has upgraded its heat exchanger method (HEM) furnaces and fabrication and metrology to scale up the production of Ti:sapphire crystals. Currently, 175 mm diameter Ti:sapphire amplifier crystals are being fabricated from high-quality 208 mm boules. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.