Demonstration of 85% pump depletion and 10-6 noise content in quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification

Full pump depletion corresponds to the upper limit of the generated signal photons relative to the pump pulse; this allows the highest peak power to be produced in a unit area of ultraintense laser amplifiers. In practical systems based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, however, the typical pump depletion is only similar to 35%. Here, we report quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification (QPCPA) with a specially designed 8-cm-thick Sm:YCOB crystal that highly dissipates the idler and hence improves pump depletion. We demonstrate 56% QPCPA energy efficiency for an 810-nm signal converted from a 532-nm pump, or equivalently 85% pump depletion. As another advantage, such a record high depletion greatly suppresses the parametric superfluorescence noise in QPCPA to only similar to 1.5 x 10(-6) relative to the amplified signal energy. These results pave the way to beyond the ten-petawatt peak power of the currently most intense lasers.

Automated summary

This study reports the application of a specially designed crystal in quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification, which can improve pump depletion and laser amplification efficiency, paving the way for the development of ultraintense laser technology.