Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Tiwari, G
• Gaul, E
• Martinez, M
• Dyer, G
• Gordon, J
• Spinks, M
• Toncian, T
• Bowers, B
• Jiao, X
• Kupfer, R
• Lisi, L
• McCary, E
• Roycroft, R
• Yandow, A
• Glenn, G D
• Donovan, M
• Ditmire, T
• Hegelich, B M

Titel

Beam distortion effects upon focusing an ultrashort petawatt laser pulse to greater than 1022 W/cm2

Ist Teil von

• Optics letters, 2019-06, Vol.44 (11), p.2764

Ort / Verlag

Washington: Optical Society of America

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

OSA Publishing

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• When an ultrashort laser pulse is tightly focused to a size approaching its central wavelength, the properties of the focused spot diverge from the diffraction-limited case. Here, we report on this change in behavior of a tightly focused petawatt-class laser beam by an ð'"/1 off-axis parabolic mirror (OAPM). Considering the effects of residual aberration, the spatial profile of the near-field, and pointing error, we estimate the deviation in peak intensities of the focused spot from the ideal case. We verify that the estimated peak intensity values are within an acceptable error range of the measured values. With the added uncertainties in target alignment, we extend the estimation to infer on-target peak intensities of ≥1022 W/cm2 for a target at the focal plane of this ð'"/1 OAPM.