Temporal Shaping of High Peak Power Pulse Trains from a Burst-Mode Laser System

• Main Authors: Jörg Körner, Jürgen Reiter, Joachim Hein, Malte C. Kaluza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2015-12-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: burst; Pockels cell; temporal shaping; Ytterbium; diode pumped; solid-state laser; cryogenically cooled; Yb:CaF2; femtosecond laser
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/5/4/1790

It has been shown in the past that pulsed laser systems operating in the so-called “burst mode” are a beneficial approach to generate high peak power laser pulses at high repetition rates suitable for various applications. So far, most high-energy burst-mode laser systems put great effort into generating a homogeneous energy distribution across the burst duration, e.g., by shaping the pump pulse. In this work, we present a new shaping technique, which is able to produce arbitrary energy distributions within the burst by pre-shaping the seed pulse burst with a Pockels cell. Furthermore, this technique allows for the precompensation of any static modulations across the burst, which may be introduced during the subsequent amplification process. Therefore, a pulse burst with a uniform energy distribution can also be generated. The method is tested with an ultra-short pulse burst mode laser amplifier system producing bursts of a 1 ms duration with a pulse repetition rate of 1 MHz and a maximum output power of 800 W during the burst. Furthermore, a method to predict the influence of the amplifier on a non-uniformly shaped burst is presented and successfully tested to produce a pre-defined pulse shape after amplification.