1. Central Laser Facility
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Laser Acceleration
-the VULCAN PW laser
Peter Norreys
Central Laser Facility
Plasma physics group, Imperial College, London
Staff of the Central Laser Facility

2. Outline Brief description of the VULCAN PW Facility
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Brief description of the VULCAN PW Facility
Why it is useful for accelerator studies
Acceleration of protons and heavy ions
Future prospects for laser accelerators
Ideas for future ExoWatt laser systems
Summary

3. Vulcan high power beam output
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
1991: High power project start
1993: 1st results with fibre stretcher
1995: Vacuum compressor installed
1998: Larger gratings
2000: Spare gratings available
2002: PW upgrade on line

4. Vulcan Laser System 8 Beam Nd:glass laser 3 kJ long pulse
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
8 Beam Nd:glass laser
3 kJ long pulse
100 TW, W.cm-2 CPA
2 separate target areas

5. PetaWatt Upgrade - Stage 1
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
In March 1999, funding was awarded for the upgrade of the 100 TW CPA beamline to 1PW as the first stage of a major enhancement programme.
This was made possible in part through the availability of certain components following the closure of the Nova system in the US
Some additional components were also made available from the Phebus system in France

6. Maximising Intensity
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
The focal intensity can be maximised using a combination of increasing the energy, reducing the focal spot size and reducing the pulse width.
Focal Intensity
Focal Spot Size
Energy
F - Number
Beam Quality
Pulsewidth
Focal Spot Size
Wavelength

7. Energy Increase
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
The energy increase is provided by the installation of additional 208 mm amplifier from the NOVA system
The pumping configuration is being modified to incorporate eight large bore flashlamps developed by the CLF
Gain tests last year with the modified design demonstrate a small signal gain >2.2

8. Energy = Pulsed Power
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
A large amount of pulsed power also came from Nova to drive these amplifiers
We have taken the opportunity to also upgrade and replace the entire Vulcan pulsed power system
Vulcan was closed for 3 months in 2001 for this to happen
No other shutdown for PW installation

9. We must double Vulcan Bandwidth
Reducing Pulse Length
Input bandwidth nm
Which would support … fs
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Output bandwidth 2 nm
Which supports … ~ 800 fs
We must double Vulcan Bandwidth

10. wpump wsignal wsignal widler Bandwidth Increase
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification (OPCPA) … in the Front End
Non linear medium
wpump
widler
wsignal
wsignal
Conservation of Energy wp= ws + wi
Phase-Matching Condition np wp= ns ws + ni wi