High Power Laser Science and Engineering, (2019), Vol. 7, e37, 11 pages.
© The Author(s) 2019. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
doi:10.1017/hpl.2019.21
ARCTURUS laser: a versatile high-contrast,
high-power multi-beam laser system
M. Cerchez
1
, R. Prasad
1
, B. Aurand
1
, A. L. Giesecke
1
, S. Spickermann
1
, S. Brauckmann
1
, E. Aktan
1
,
M. Swantusch
1
, M. Toncian
2
, T. Toncian
2
, and O. Willi
1
1
Institut f
¨
ur Laser und Plasmaphysik, Heinrich-Heine-Universit
¨
at D
¨
usseldorf, 40225 D
¨
usseldorf, Germany
2
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, 01328 Dresden, Germany
(Received 12 March 2019; revised 15 April 2019; accepted 13 May 2019)
Abstract
With the latest configuration, the Ti:Sa laser system ARCTURUS (D
¨
usseldorf University, Germany) operates with a
double-chirped pulse amplification (CPA) architecture delivering pulses with an energy of 7 J before compression in
each of the two high-power beams. By the implementation of a plasma mirror system, the intrinsic laser contrast is
enhanced up to 10
−12
on a time scale of hundreds of picoseconds, before the main peak. The laser system has been used
in various configurations for advanced experiments and different studies have been carried out employing the high-power
laser beams as a single, high-intensity interaction beam (I ≈ 10
20
W/cm
2
), in dual- and multi-beam configurations or
in a pump–probe arrangement.
Keywords: Ti:Sa lasers; multi-beam configuration; high power laser pulses; relativistic plasmas; laser driven particle and radiation sources
1. Introduction
The generation of multi-terawatt, sub-picosecond laser
pulses was until recently only possible at large facilities
due to the major infrastructure and personnel demands.
However, in the past decade, the Ti:Sa laser technology,
delivering hundreds of terawatts, has become commercially
available. Owing to the short laser pulse lengths (tens of
femtoseconds), the energy requirements are thus kept at the
level of a few joules, making the infrastructure and personnel
demands affordable and attractive at an university-scale
laboratory. The combination of ultrashort pulse duration
and the high peak power achieved nowadays
[1]
have opened
up unique opportunities for the study of fundamental
physical processes in the relativistic regime
[2–4]
. Various
plasma conditions have been explored, aimed at improved
physical parameters for laser-driven particle acceleration or
the generation of coherent radiation required for different
applications. Recently, novel interaction conditions and
unique plasma states have been created and controlled by
the combined effects of multiple beams interacting with a
target sample
[5–8]
. In the past, experiments which intended
to explore the potential of a dual-beam configuration for
Correspondence to: M. Cerchez, Institut f
¨
ur Laser und Plasma-
physik, Heinrich-Heine-Universit
¨
at D
¨
usseldorf, Universit
¨
atsstr. 1, 40225
D
¨
usseldorf, Germany. Email: mirela.cerchez@hhu.de
plasma investigations or for probing the main interaction
relied on a single high-power (HP) beam used in a split-
off configuration. Although the two pulses which originate
from the same beam are temporally synchronized, there
are limitations on each pulse energy, duration and focus
quality
[9, 10]
. The large infrastructure, multi-petawatt-class
laser facilities
[11]
presently being built are designed on
multiple beam architectures (e.g. APOLLON, France
[12]
;
Extreme Light Infrastructure
[13–15]
; SULF, China
[16]
).
In this paper we present the up-to-date, multi-beam archi-
tecture of the ARCTURUS laser facility and the operational
physical parameters of the laser beams. The interaction
of the pulses with solid, cluster and gaseous targets was
extensively investigated and a brief overview of the recent
experimental studies performed in either a single- or multi-
beam configuration is presented. The great versatility of
the laser system is shown by the different experimental
configurations used for various interaction conditions.
2. Double-CPA architecture of the ARCTURUS laser
system
The ARCTURUS laser facility located at the University of
D
¨
usseldorf, Germany is a university-based laser laboratory
dedicated to the study of the interactions of high-power,
1
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