Highest LIDT on large optics for HAPLS

29 Sep 2022

Reaching highest LIDT was demonstrated with LASEROPTIK’s large mirrors for HAPLS, the most powerful petawatt laser ever built, part of ELI Beamlines.

These results have now been published by a team from both organizations: ”Large area ion beam sputtered dielectric ultrafast mirrors for petawatt laser beamlines.“

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.452249

Applying their unique IBS machine, LASEROPTIK successfully coated dielectric mirrors for the beam transport system of the world’s highest average power petawatt (10¹⁵ W) laser system HAPLS of ELI Beamlines in Prague. ELI assessed the mirror performance and determined that all performance parameters have been successfully met or exceeded. One of the major achievements is a measured laser damage threshold of 0.8 J/cm² at 25 fs and 810 nm, while maintaining large bandwidth and high wavefront quality. The large broadband mirrors showed no crazing after many vacuum-air cycles, which is a major risk of conventionally deposited large sized mirrors.

It is expected that this will enlarge the lifetime of IBS coated petawatt mirrors significantly and consequently increases the up-time and lowers the operation costs of PW laser beamlines.

LASEROPTIK thanks their partners of ELI Beamlines for the fruitful cooperation. We wish all users great success with their upcoming flagship experiments.