The most powerful laser in the world has reached 10 PetaWatts with a 0.9 Strehl ratio, and the help of Imagine Optic’s AO Laser solutions. In the last two decades, adaptive optics (AO) has dramatically improved the performance of Ultra-High Intensity Laser (UHIL) by mastering wavefront aberrations to deliver optimal focus for cutting-edge scientific applications. The latest generation of UHIL is now based on lasers delivering more peak and mean power than previous technology, and rely more than ever on adaptive optics.
The HPLS (High Power Laser System) manufactured by Thales belongs to the latest generation of UHIL and was comissioned at ELI-NP (Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics) in Romania. It embeds a new generation of AO solutions combining highly accurate and robust wavefront sensors, and fast and precise deformable mirrors, namely our ILAO star DM controled through our WaveTune software.
The HPLS presents two beamlines which deliver each a main beam of 10 PW peak power at 1 shot per minute, and 2 other intermediate outputs at 100 TW, 10 Hz and 1 PW, 1 Hz. Each of these 6 outputs rely on Imagine Optics’ ILAO* deformable mirror and Wavetune software to optimize and stabilize these ultraintense beams along 2 main objectives:
– Focusability, with a 0.9 Strehl ratio capability.
– Compressor’s gratings protection, thanks to the correction of aberrations of the laser beam prior to compression in order to avoid potential hot spots.
Feel free to reach us if you would like more info on our work for UHIL. You can also check out our recent webinar “A practical tour of Adaptive Optics” for more on AO.