Compressor Alignment Procedure

I concentrated on the pulse compressor these days. Several motors were used to control two big 1200 line/mm gratings. The motors were controlled by Aerotech UNIDEX 511 motion controller. The computer interface program was written in LabView. It's easy to change the grating reflected angles and distances by rotating a hand wheel. The alignment procedure is:

1). Steering the mirrors to center the beam in the grating G1.
2). Set G1 to 0 degree to check the retro reflection.
3). Set G1 to Littrow angle (28.76 in our case) by adjusting the rock.
4). Change G1 to 13.358 for deviation.
5). Set G2 angle 26.716 for 0 degree back reflection checking.
6). Set G2 angle 55.48 for Littrow checking.
7). Set G1 and G2 both 13.358 degree.

related link: UNIDEX 511

Far-field distribution of the seed beam after 3rd ampfilfier

After checking the mirrors and cleaning the dirty ones, we measured the beam profile again. By changing the distance between convex lens and CCD camera, we can measure the far-field distribution of the seed beam. We believed the beam was still good after passing the third amplifier and many reflected mirrors.

Measuring the seed beam profile after 3rd amplifier

We measured the seed beam profile after third amplifier, the CCD camera was put behind the convex mirror of the telescope.

Because the camera was closed to the mirror, we measured the intensity distribution. From the picture shown in the right, we found there were some dust or damaged parts. We should check the optical path and optical components to find what caused this ugly beam profile.

YAG #4 beam alignment

Before running the third amplifier, it's necessary to check pump laser beam qualities of YAG #3 and YAG #4. We found the some beam delivering mirrors for YAG #4 had been burned. Two mirrors were replaced by the new ones, the other two mirrors were just carefully rotated to avoid beam hit the small burned dots.

It's so excited that the spectrometer can be controlled by the desktop.

Realigning the laser pulse stretcher

It's very hard to increase the output energy from the second amplifier, even optimizing the cavity more carefully. The problem might come from the front end, we traced the beam and found it's very weak after the stretcher. So it took time to realign the laser path and made the dim laser dot became very bright.

The first amplifier output energy without the saturater was around 5 mV (normally ~4 mV), it's about more than 2 mV with the saturater (normally ~1 mV). The output from second amplifier reached about 400 mV. The beam was delivered into the spatial filter and measured the profile using the CCD camera. The diffraction pattern indicated there was a dust or damage on some mirror surface.

Spectrum from laser osillator

A loptop was used to replace the old desktop. In the beginning the spectrometer S2000-USB could not be recognized by the laptop. Somebody suggested to try another USB port, then the signal was appeared on the screen. This indicated the laptop remembered the original port connecting the hardware.

The snapshot of the spectra is shown on the right, the blue color line is reference spectrum, the red one is the real-time spectrum.

The Control Computer Out of Order

I planed to run the whole system today, unfortunately I found the computer controlling the Ocean Optics S2000 spectrometer was down in the morning. I tried to restart the computer many times, it's no response. Because this spectrometer is used to monitor the laser spectrum, which can show if mode-locking status. The control computer must be repaired as soon as possible. The connection adapter is ADC1000-USB(S/N ADUD5565), the software is OOIBASE32.

The computer power supply was totally dead, I tried another computer. However it's not easy to run OOIBEASE32 in the new computer. I tried a laptop which the software has been install, but it cannot recognize the hardware.

Crystal surface burned again

When the output energy after the PC2 became lower, I tried to tune the pump mirrors to maximize the output. During the tuning, I found the energy really became bigger, unfortunately the left side of the crystal was burned again. The similar phenomenon happened before, I think the measured energy was not the laser pulse but the spontaneous emission. When ASE goes higher, the pump beam was focused smaller, which would damage the crystal surface. Next tuning time, it's better to measure the pulse shape using the diode and make sure no ASE anymore.

I also found the Ti:sapphire crystal was not installed well, I put more Indium layer to hold the crystal tightly. Then I realigned the amplifier #1, changed the times of optical pass from 6 to 7.

Creating the pinhole for the spatial filter

I optimized the amplifier #2 alignment and obtained the normal output energy. Then the beam was delivered into the spatial filter. We already installed a piece of window for burning the pinhole last week. The seed beam from oscillator was blocked, so the ASE beam from first and second amplifiers was used to burn the hole. After about one and half hours, the beam could be watched from the spatial filter other side. The beam profile looked good by eyes, the real profile should be measured using the SPIRICON LBA camera.

YAG #1 and YAG #2 delivering mirrors burned

The amplifier #2 worked well, the next step is to send the beam to the spatial filter, before that we must drill a pinhole using the laser beam. We chose a piece of used window to replace the old window with a bad pinhole. We tried to use ASE from Amplifier #2 to burn the pinhole, due to its low energy, it will take more than 2 hours to do it. So we left the laser running, however, after half an hour, we found there was no light emission. Checking the 532nm reflected mirrors one by one, we found two of them were burned. After changing them, it took one more day to realign the first amplifier. So far we already got the cleaning pulse from the amplifier #1, but the output energy is very low. We need time to optimize this multi-pass amplifier and then test the amplifier #2 and drill the pinhole.

Measuring the AMP2 beam profile

In order to measure the beam profile after the amplifier #2, we flip up the flip #3 before the mirror M16 ( see setup schematics ) to send the laser beam into a wedge. The laser beam was splitted by the wedge, and small part of laser beam was delivered into a SPRICON LBA-PC laser beam analyzer for diagnostics.

The beam profile, as shown in the right picture, looked very ugly. The diffraction patten implied the Ti:sapphire crystal or the reflected mirror was somehow damaged. After carefully observation, we found the crystal surface has been burnt two spots. Some anti-reflection coating areas probably were stripped by the strong pump laser.

So we replaced the damaged crystal with a new one, the measured beam profile was shown in the left picture. The light distribution looked homogeneous, no any diffraction was found.

Beam delivering mirrors were damaged again

After replacing the Ti:sapphire crystal of the first amplifier, we tested the CPA part 1 and part 2 this week. The output energies measured from test points were perfectly achieved what we expected. The crystal was not burned anymore after running 3 days, the output energy after first amplifier kept very stable from morning to the end of the work day. Unfortunately we found the surface of the beam delivering mirrors M18 and M19 was burned several dots. It's better to find what caused this damage before we change the mirrors. So we try to send the beam to the CCD camera to check the beam profile next week.

Improvement of the multipass amplifier

In order to protect the crystal, we tried many ways including decreasing the pump energy, walking away the focal point from crystal, reflecting back the pump beam, however the crystal still was burned sometimes. So this time we try to using the second beam to pump from the other side. The second was sent to dump before, now we added three mirrors to steer the beam into the crystal.

Terawatt Ultrafast High Field Facility: TUHFF

The Chemistry Division’s Terawatt Ultrafast High Field Facility (TUHFF) was built in order to provide a source of femtosecond electron pulses, femtosecond tunable x-rays (soft and hard), and femtosecond proton pulses. TUHFF will primarily be used for applications in the fields of chemistry and physics. A Titanium:Sapphire based laser system that produces 0.6 Joules of energy in a 50 femtosecond pulse was constructed. This system produces peak powers in excess of 10 terawatt! Because of these extremely high power levels, part of the laser system and the experimental areas (target chamber) are contained in vacuum chambers to prevent the dielectric breakdown of air. Currently, we are exploring the generation of femtosecond pulses of ionizing radiation (both protons and electrons) and of x-rays by focusing this intense beam (power density >10^19 W/cm2!) into either a metal target (hard x-rays and protons) or a supersonic gas jet (energetic electrons).
Source: Chemistry division, Argonne National Laboratory