Current Laser and Experimental Parameters
Laser Energy: the energy of the laser is adjusted depending on the configuration
- At PTA, short pulses with up to 140 J in combination with an f = 40 cm, 45° parabola are available.
- At PTA, short pulses with up to 70 J in combination with an f =150 cm, 90° parabola are available.
- At Z6, long (1 – 10 ns) pulses with an energy of about 180 J (depending on pulse length) at 527 nm are available with an f = 4 m focusing lens. Two random phase plates creating top-hat foci of 1 mm or 0.5 mm diameter are available.
- At Z6, short pulses of 15 J at 1054 nm and a pulse duration of 500 fs are also available but not in parallel with the nanosecond beam.
- At HHT, long pulses (1 – 10 ns) with an energy up to 200 J (on best effort basis and depending on pulse length, for example: max. 100 J in 2 ns.) at 527 nm are available with an f = 1.8 m focusing lens (F/13). Main focal spot 20 µm (FWHM), most of the energy contained in ~60 µm diameter spot.
Pulse profiles
- The pulse duration at PHELIX is 500 fs by default. The pulse duration can be stretched to a few ps with on-line measurement. Above 3 ps, the pulse duration is set and calibrated off-line, but cannot be verified on-line.
- The temporal contrast of PHELIX is 10-11 (10-12 best effort). It is verified offline before every beam time.
- A programmable nanosecond front-end allows for pulses with a deterministic pulse profile with 500 ps resolution within a 10ns window. The pulse length must not be shorter than 1.5 ns.
- At PTA, a combination of the long and the short pulse can be requested to introduce a fully controllable pedestal. However, the timing jitter between the two frontends will be at least +/- 200 ps (peak-to-peak).
Further remarks
- At PTA, it is possible to introduce apertures to create a double beam. In such a case, the energy cannot exceed 30 J per beam.
- At Z6, a VISAR system (660nm, 40ns) is available.
