IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO.
3, MARCH 2004
Prepulse-Free Petawatt Laser for a Fast Ignitor
Yoneyoshi Kitagawa, Hisanori Fujita, Ryosuke Kodama, Hidetsugu Yoshida, Satoshi Matsuo, Takahisa Jitsuno,
Tetsuji Kawasaki, Hisao Kitamura, Tadashi Kanabe, Shuji Sakabe, Keisuke Shigemori, Noriaki Miyanaga, and
Yasukazu Izawa
Abstract—We have developed a prepulse-free short-pulse
Nd:glass laser system of 0.9-PW peak power to heat a pre-
imploded high-density plasma. An optical parametric chirped
amplification system is introduced to reduce the prepulses to an
amplitude (1 5 10 8 ) of that of the main pulse. The com-
pressor is a double-path grating pair system 94 cm in diameter
compressing the 50-cm-diameter laser beam to 470 fs. An off-axis
parabolic mirror has focused the 420-J energy to an intensity of
2 5 1019 W cm 2 . Part of the front end of the chirped pulse
is seeded into the preamplifier of the GEKKO XII laser, used to
implode a pellet target, to enable the petawatt laser to irradiate the
pre-imploded pellet during stagnation of a few tens of picoseconds.
Index Terms—Chirped pulse amplification, fast ignitor, optical
parametric chirped amplification system (OPCPA), petawatt laser.
I. INTRODUCTION
C HIRPED pulse amplification has created a revolution in
the production and use of terawatt or even petawatt lasers
[1]. Perry et al. first constructed a 1.5-PW laser at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory [2]. The laser produced 660 J
in a 440-fs pulse. Petawatt lasers are used for the Inertial Con-
finement Fusion fast ignitor scheme. The idea of the fast ignitor
scheme is to pre-implode a deuterium–tritium capsule to an iso-
choric condition [3] and, at the maximum compression point,
the imploded core is irradiated with a laser pulse much shorter
than the 10-ps hydrodynamic disassembly time of the irradi-
ated spot. The laser produces the hot electrons that increase the
spot ion temperature to initiate fusion burn. For the fast ignitor
and related studies, we had constructed a series of ultra-intense
lasers. The first was the 30-TW GMII, upgraded later to 60 TW
[4], [5], and the second was the 100-TW laser PW Module [6].
Though the former is used only for ultra-intense laser-plasma
interactions, such as generation and transport of energetic parti-
cles [7], [8], the latter was coupled to the imploding long-pulse
laser GEKKO XII to study the fast heating of the imploded core
plasmas [9].
Now we have constructed a petawatt laser system producing a
few hundred joules of power in a 470-fs pulse without prepulses,
synchronized to GEKKO XII, the fast ignitor experimental fa-
cility at the Institute of Laser Engineering at Osaka University
[10], [11].
Manuscript received May 20, 2003; revised December 3, 2003. The PW laser
construction started under the 1999 supplementary budget of the Japanese gov-
ernment, entitled “Fast Ignitor Experimental Facility.”
The authors are with the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University,
Osaka 565-0871, Japan (e-mail: yoneyosi@ile.osaka-u.ac.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JQE.2003.823043
0018-9197/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
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281
The system consists of:
1) the front end, including an Nd:YAG mode-locked oscil-
lator, a stretcher, and optical parametric chirped ampli-
fiers (OPCPAs) [13]–[15];
2) the glass laser amplifier chain, including the rod pream-
plifiers and the 35-cm aperture Cassegrain disk ampli-
fiers, followed by a spatial filter SF350 and the Faraday
rotator FR200;
3) the beam transporting part, including a deformable
mirror and a beam expander;
4) a double path pulse compressor;
5) a beam focusing part.
A regenerative amplifier, widely used in chirped pulse ampli-
fication (CPA), produces prepulses from the adjacent pulses of
the mode-locked oscillator pulse trains. Even when the inten-
sity is as low as of the main pulse or less, these produce
preplasmas on a target surface and consequently generate super-
fluous hot electrons, which not only lose the laser energy in the
region and preheat them, but also make the fast ignitor mecha-
nism complicated and unclear. For petawatt-class lasers, the pre-
plasmas are much denser and cause more serious defects. Thus,
we have introduced an OPCPA system to replace the current re-
generative amplifier. The front end produces 60-mJ pulses with
a prepulse ratio (the prepulse intensity divided by the main in-
tensity) of .
To achieve a petawatt output, we have reduced the gain
narrowing of the system and the B integral by increasing
the front-end gain and decreasing the main amplifier gain.
Consequently, we have obtained a spectral width as high as
3.6 nm and a B integral as low as 1.4, leading to a compressed
pulse of 470 fs. The gold-coated gratings limited the output
power below 500 J, since its damage threshold was measured
to be 400 mJ cm .
We have also introduced a 40-cm-diameter deformable
mirror between the final spatial filter and the compressor.
Thirty-seven actuators deformed the mirror surface correcting
the cross-sectional phase aberrations and focusing the PW
power to a few times of the diffraction-limited spot.
As for the pulse compressor, we have selected a double-path
two-grating configuration, which is relatively compact and
cost-effective.
The fast ignitor concept requires illuminating the heating
beam deep into the imploded fuel core within a maximum
compression or stagnation period of a few tens of picoseconds.
Therefore, the synchronization between the PW laser and
the GEKKO XII imploding green beams (GXII) should be
within 10 ps, and this was carried out optically by stretching
the front end of the PW pulse and a 1-ns slice injected into
282 IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 3, MARCH 2004

Fig. 1. Diagram of the PW laser configuration.

the GXII preamplifier. Since the oscillator of the GXII is

a pulse-mode-locked (Kuizenga) type [16], any electrical
synchronization within a few tens of picoseconds is difficult.

II. PETAWATT LASER SYSTEM

This section describes the system. Fig. 1 shows the the block
diagram of the PW laser system. The system is initiated with
an Nd:glass mode-locked oscillator operating at 1.053 m with
two series of stretchers and an OPCPA. This front-end system is
located in the GXII oscillator room that is electrically isolated
from other areas to prevent misfires due to electric noises from
the flash lamps of the GXII amplifiers [17]. The chirp rate, that
is, the pulse width/spectral width, is 3 ns/6 nm. The output is
transported to the Nd:glass amplifier chain.
The beam, through a serrated aperture is injected into rod
amplifiers, followed by 350-mm-aperture disk amplifiers. The
four disk amplifier modules are arranged in line, as shown in
Fig. 1. The beam is amplified to 1 kJ in power and is enlarged
Fig. 2. Compression chamber of the PW laser: 11.5 m in length and 2.7 m in
to 350 mm in diameter through a three-path Cassegrain con- diameter.
figuration. The output pulse is transported through a 350-mm
spatial filter SF350 and a 200-mm Faraday rotator FR200 to the
Target-I chamber room. A 40-cm-aperture deformable mirror
reduces any phase aberration to 1.3 wavelength and a beam ex- The beam enters the compressor tilted at 1 to the horizontal
pander enlarges the beam size from 350 to 500 mm in diameter axis, resulting in the output beam tilted at the same angle, en-
to reduce the optical damages on the diffraction gratings of the abling the exit mirror capable of directing the beam correctly
compressor. into the focusing chamber. An off-axial parabola of F number
The compressor has a double-path two-grating configuration. 7.6 focuses the beam into the center of the target chamber.
Diffraction gratings, 94 cm in diameter, are installed in a large In Table I, the design parameters of the PW laser are listed
vacuum chamber, as seen in Fig. 2. This chamber is connected with the values achieved.
to the target chamber, as seen in the right-hand side of the figure, Fig. 3 shows the main configuration of the PW beam line and
to which the GXII beam ducts concentrate. the 12 GXII beams through the Gear room to the Target-I room.

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KITAGAWA et al.: PREPULSE-FREE PETAWATT LASER FOR A FAST IGNITOR 283

TABLE I
PW LASER DESIGN PARAMETERS: GOAL AND VALUES ACHIEVED 6/2002

Fig. 3. Three-dimensional ray traces of PW (bold line) and GXII 12 beams

(thin lines).

III. PW FRONT END

A. OPCPA
The front end consists of a CW mode-locked Nd:glass
oscillator, the first stretcher, the first OPCPA, the second
stretcher, and the second OPCPA, as shown in Fig. 4(a) [12].
The system produces 10 mJ at 6-Hz repetition with prepulse of
. We have used a small four-path compressor that
uses the same groove density grating as the main compressor,
which is 1480 lines/mm.
Fig. 4. (a) Optics arrangement of the PW front end. (b) OPCPA layout. The
Optical parametric chirped amplification, first proposed by seed pulse is amplified in a single-pass geometry using BBO crystals, pumped
Dubietis et al. [13] and then by Ross et al. [14], offers significant with a 530-nm YAG laser.
advantages over current regenerative amplifier schemes, such
as: 1) a high gain in a single-pass amplification; 2) a high beam An oscillator pulse of 150 fs, 6-nm spectral width centered
quality because of a low heat deposition and a small B-integral; at 1.053 m wavelength, is delivered via a two-stage stretcher,
3) a high contrast ratio due to a low level of prepulses and am- either to the first OPCPA or to a regenerative amplifier [17].
plified spontaneous emissions; and 4) in particular, a broad gain The maximum seeding power is 1 mJ. The pulse is stretched
bandwidth. to 3 ns and the gain bandwidth is calculated to be 120 nm [14].

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284
Fig. 5. OPCPA energy gain as a function of the pumping intensity for two
BBO crystals layout: open circle is at seed of 0.2 MW1cm , solid 1.4 and gray
6.2, respectively. Small signal gain at 500 MW1cm .
The layout of the second OPCPA is shown in Fig. 4(b) using two
BBO crystals that are 15 mm long and mm in cross sec-
tion, cut at 22.8 for the type-I angular phase matching. Teflon
antireflection coating on both sides of the crystals prevents sur-
face deliquescence. A frequency-doubled (532 nm) -switched
Nd:YAG laser pumps the crystals at 6 Hz and the pulse duration
is 9.5 ns. The transverse mode is single to prevent the spec-
tral modulation of an amplified chirped pulse. The pumping
power is changed by a combination of half-wave plates and
thin-film polarizers. A 1.5 demagnification telescope reduces
the beam diameter to 2 mm ( ) and images the pump beam
at the middle point of two crystals. The pump intensity and en-
ergy are 950 MWcm and 300 mJ, respectively. The seed and
pump pulses are polarized horizontally and vertically, respec-
tively. Two beams intersect at 0.5 in two BBO crystals that are
100 cm apart.
The energy gain is plotted as a function of the pumping in-
tensity for several intensities of the seed pulse in Fig. 5. The
dichroic beam splitters and antireflection coatings on the crys-
tals result in 25% loss. The signal gain of the two series of BBO
crystal is over 7000 at 500 MWcm of pumping. The energy
gain saturates at 500 for 0.2 MWcm of the seed intensity and
450 MW cm of the pump. The maximum energy gain is 90
at 6.2 MW cm of seed and 950 MW cm of pump. The in-
tensity gain is reduced to 36 due to broadening of the chirped
pulse width. The BBO crystal amplifies the signal up to 65 mJ
for 0.58-mJ seed and 29-mJ pumping.
A pump-to-signal conversion efficiency reached 23%, almost
a theoretical limit, and is higher than any other reported repet-
itive OPCPA system. This is due to the fact that the cross sec-
tion of the seed laser was 2.5 mm in size and more than 72%
was overlapped with the pump, whose size is 2.7 mm, as seen
in Fig. 6. In addition, the 3-ns seed pulse was fully within the
9.5-ns pump in time. It has previously been calculated [18], [19]
that the conversion efficiency is over 30% only when the gain
is saturated. From the transmitted energy and the depletion of
the pump beam, we have estimated the extraction energy of the
amplified signal. Consequently, with only 30 mm total crystal
length, the total conversion efficiency is 45% including the idler.
The present pump beam stability and jitter are 8% and 1 ns or
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IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 3, MARCH 2004
Fig. 6. Near field pattern of pump and seed and various output energy signals.
Pump beam diameter is 2.7 mm.
Fig. 7. Spectral bandwidth as a function of the energy gain for various
seed energies: gray circle is 580 J, solid 130 and open 20, respectively. The
right-hand vertical axis is a Fourier-transformed pulse width. The spectral
widths of 7 and 19 nm correspond to pulse widths of 3.5 and 9.5 ns, respectively.
more, respectively, which limited the intensity stability of the
signal to % under the linear gain condition. However,
when the seed energy increased to the saturation region, the sta-
bility markedly improved to %.
The pump beam profile is a Gaussian with a diameter of
2.7 mm , as in Fig. 6. The diameter is slightly larger than
that of the seed pulse, 1.7 mm 2.5 mm , also in Fig. 6.
The signal, though showing a smooth Gaussian shape under the
low gain condition, becomes flat-top in space as well as in time
under the saturation condition. The beam diameter is 2.5-mm
at 56-mJ output energy and is close to the pump beam one.
As plotted by open circle in Fig. 7, the bandwidth for a 20- J
seed (0.2 MW cm ) does not change until the pulse gain in-
creases to 100, when it increases linearly. We have observed no
apparent gain narrowing so far. For 580- J seeding, the max-
imum spectral width is 16.5 nm at a gain of 90. The 16.5-nm
width corresponds to 8.3-ns pulse width, which is 2.4 times the
seed width. In OPCPA, the gain saturation causes the spectral
broadening, since, as the pump increases, the spectral peak is
clipped and the wings rise.
We have recompressed the clipped 5-nm signal using the
monitoring compressor. A single-shot autocorrelation shows
the compressed pulse to be 350 fs, assuming a Gaussian-pulse
shape. The pedestal is caused by the spectral modulation in
the power amplifier as well as the spectral clipping at the edge
of the grating. The time–bandwidth product is 0.52, which
KITAGAWA et al.: PREPULSE-FREE PETAWATT LASER FOR A FAST IGNITOR
Fig. 8. Prepulse ratio of recompressed pulses: Comparison between:
(a) Ti:Al O regenerative amplifier and (b) OPCPA. From left in (a) the first,
second, and fifth prepulses are from the regenerative amplifier chain, but the
third and fourth are due to the Pockels cell onset waveform. In (b), the arrow
shows emission due to the optical parametric generation. In both (a) and (b),
the main pulse is saturated. 5 ns/div.
indicates that the pulse is close to Fourier transform-limited
one. This result permits us to neglect any self-phase modulation
through the OPCPA.
B. Prepulse Suppression
Fig. 8 shows a comparison of the prepulses from the Ti:Al O
regenerative amplifier [Fig. 8(a)] and the OPCPA [Fig. 8(b)].
The oscilloscope temporal resolution is 300 ps. The prepulses
appearing in Fig. 8(a) have a magnitude of between to
. From the left the first, second, and fifth prepulses are
from the regenerative amplifier chain, but the third and fourth
are due to the Pockels cell onset waveform. In (b), the arrow
shows emission due to the optical parametric generation, which
has a magnitude of . Any other prepulses are less than
this level. In both (a) and (b), the main pulse is saturated. Since
the optical parametric chirped amplification occurs when the
pump and seed pulses overlap in a single path, the prepulse ratio
should be as same as the inverse OPCPA gain, typically . gain distribution, resulting in peaking the inner edge of the
Since the intensity of a PW class Nd:glass laser [20] is as high
as W cm , the intensity of the prepulse is the order
of W cm , being similar to amplified spontaneous
emissions in the main amplifier.
Since the nonlinear optical coefficient of BBO crystal is as
high as 1.94 pm/V, the system can provide high gain even for
a few hundred MW cm pump, which makes the signal easy
to saturate. The saturation makes the amplified spectrum and
beam profiles broad and flat-top, so that we do not need to
consider the gain narrowing. To suppress the flattering and im-
prove the pulse shape, it is useful to introduce an acoustooptic
programmable dispersive filter (Dazzler) [21] or a spatial light
modulator (SLM) [22].
C. Synchronization
By injecting a part of the PW light into the GXII preamplifier,
the PW laser is synchronized to the GXII beams within a few
picoseconds.
To achieve this, the GXII laser requires from the front end
of the PW laser at least a 1-ns slice wide to produce energetic
beams high enough to implode a plasma shell hundreds times
solid density. So that a part of the 3 ns/6 nm (pulse width/spec-
tral width) output from the front end is stretched to 6 ns/6 nm
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285
and is then sliced to 1 ns/1 nm width and injected into the
GXII system, as shown in Fig. 9(a), while (b) is its pulse shape.
(c) shows the waveform of the chirped pulses, amplified and
converted to green through the GEKKO XII. Thus, we have
obtained 3 kJ on target from 12 green semi-Gaussian beams,
which uniformly imploded the deuterated polystyrene shell tar-
gets [11]. The pulse width is ns (FWHM) and the
conversion from 1 to 0.5 m was %.
We discuss the CPA in the following section.
The synchronization jitter is not zero, since the rise time for
each shot varies due to the nonlinear saturation of the amplitude.
IV. GLASS LASER AMPLIFIER CHAIN
A. System Gain
Fig. 10 is the PW laser main amplifier, consisting of four
modules of 350-mm disk amplifiers arranged in three-path
Cassegrain configuration.
To suppress the gain narrowing and to make the B integral
low, we have used only one rod amplifier in preamplifiers, en-
abling us to get the spectral width larger than 3 nm for 1 kJ or
more of output power. Using the material data in Table II, we
have calculated the gain and the B integral [20].
Fig. 11 shows the energy gain and B integral estimations of
the system. The B integral is reduced to as low as 1.4 at 1 kJ
output. The glasses used are HOYA phosphate LHG-8 for rod
and LHG-80 for disk, respectively.
B. Improvement of Fill Factor
The gain of the 50-mm glass amplifier rod (RA 50) is high on
its axis, as shown by solid squares and dashed line in Fig. 12.
The Cassegrain main amplifier emphasizes this nonuniform
output doughnut beam. Milling azimuthal slots onto the glass
rod surface, i.e., gashing as shown in the photograph in Fig. 12,
diffuses the flash lamp lights and makes the peripheral gain
increase, as shown by dots in Fig. 12, which compensates for
and moderates the gain distribution all over the doughnut cross
section.
A hard-edge apodizer, currently used at the input of the glass
amplifier, resulted in spiked edges on the amplified beam and
caused serious damage to the optics. We have thus replaced it
with a serrated aperture shown in Fig. 13. The serrated aperture
is coated with chromium on a glass substrate. The tip is 3 m
round and 80 m in pitch, as seen in Fig. 13. By successively
relaying the aperture image through a chain of spatial filters,
SF25 of 25 cm in diameter, SF50 of 50 cm, SF150 of 150 cm,
and SF350 of 35 cm, we have minimized the edge diffraction
effects and transferred the resultant image to the final image
point around the deformable mirror in front of the compression
chamber.
Figs. 14(a) and (b), using both the gashed rod and the serrated
aperture for 576 J of output, not only improve the fill factor
to 0.62, but also smooth the inner and outer edges as shown
in the cross-sectional profiles. Fig. 14(c) shows a three-dimen-
sional (3-D) image of the cross section of the smoothed beam.
The intensity profile of the output beam is a flat-top doughnut
286 IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 3, MARCH 2004

Fig. 9. (a) Spectrum and (b) pulse shape of beam sliced from OPCPA and (c) CPA beam, amplified, and converted to green in GXII system: 1.1 ns FWHM.

Fig. 12. Gain distribution comparison of the cross section between

azimuthally gashed and normal glasses at 16 kV pumping. Photo is a gashed
glass surface.
Fig. 10. Four modules of the 350-mm disk amplifier as the PW main amplifier.

TABLE II
OPTICAL DATA

Fig. 13. V-shaped edge of the serrated aperture used in the PW laser.
Chromium on glass substrate: tip is 3 m round and 80 m in pitch.

shape with an outer diameter of 31.5 cm and an inner diameter

of 13.2 cm.

C. Spectral Control and Reduction of Gain Narrowing

Fig. 11. Energy gain and B integral of the PW laser. The glasses used are
HOYA phosphate LHG-8 for the rod and LHG-80 for the disk, respectively
(refer to Table II).
To obtain a 400-fs pulse, we have not only made the spec-
trum broader by reducing the amplifier gain narrowing, but also
improved the spectral shape by enlarging the front-end spec-
trum. By saturating the front-end output, for instance, we have
obtained a 9.6-nm-wide flat-top pulse from the 6-nm Gaussian
one.
Fig. 15 shows that the injection at 1053 nm with the 9.6-nm
(thin line) semi flat-top shape results in an amplified output of
3.7 nm (bold), which is nearly twice the 2-nm output without the
control. The dashed line is the calculation. We can then obtain
a compressed pulse of 400 fs or shorter.

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KITAGAWA et al.: PREPULSE-FREE PETAWATT LASER FOR A FAST IGNITOR 287

Fig. 16. Experimental gain narrowing. The solid line is low-gain operation
mode at 200 J input and the dashed line is a high gain at 10 J input. Open
circle: 1053.8-nm input wavelength; square: 1052.5; triangle: 1055.1; dot:
1054.6 nm, respectively.

Fig. 14. (a) Near fields of the normal rod without a serrated aperture: a fill
factor of 0.49 for 685-J output. Shown at the bottom is the cross-sectional
profile. (b) Near field of the gashed rod with a serrated aperture: a fill factor of
0.62 for 576 J. The profile edges are smoothed. (c) A 3-D reconstructed near
field pattern: 567 J.

Fig. 17. CPA of the 350-mm Cassegrain amplifier.

300 J. Increasing the input wavelength from 1052 to 1055 nm,

it is likely that the output spectral width becomes broader. We
have so far found that 1054.6 nm is the optimum wavelength to
provide the greatest spectral width and the shortest pulse width.
Increasing the OPCPA output to 10 mJ can reduce the total
Fig. 15. Input 9.6-nm flat-top spectrum (thin line) and 3.7-nm output (bold);
the dashed line is the calculation. gain to enabling us to obtain the 1-kJ output. The final spec-
tral width increases to 3.5 nm. Then the pulse duration must be
compressed to 320 fs, assuming a Fourier transform limit pulse
Measuring the spectral gain distribution of the glass, we have
shape of sech .
calculated the spectral narrowing [23]. The pulse with a length
By fully pumping the amplifier at 25 kV, almost 20% the
of 1.5 ns and spectral width of 6 nm was injected into the glass
output energy is concentrated in a diffraction-limited spot, de-
amplifiers. The disk glass was HOYA LHG-80 694 380
fined by 2.44 F . A wavefront compensation will increase it to
45 mm in size. The measured small-signal gain was 1.88 and
50%.
the total gain of the three-pass amplifier was approximately
To obtain 3-nm bandwidth and 1 kJ of output energy, we have
2000. To avoid parasitic oscillation, a large-aperture Pockels cell
reduced the gain of the four-pass preamplifier. As a result, the
switched out the beam path after the first pass.
total gain of the system gain fell. Instead, by increasing the in-
The spectral width of the amplifier output is plotted as a func-
jected beam energy, we have compensated for the output energy.
tion of the output energy in Fig. 16. Using the regenerative am-
The experimental data agree well with the chirped pulse ampli-
plifier, we have tested two gain modes, the high-gain (10 J
fication calculation over a wide input power range, as shown in
input, ; dashed line) and low-gain mode (200 J,
Fig. 17. We obtained a chirped pulse amplification of 1.1 kJ.
; solid line). The plots are divided into three dif-
ferent output energy groups. The group on the left in Fig. 16 is
the input. The central group denotes the output of the rod ampli- V. BEAM TRANSPORT
fiers with the final amplifier output in the right group. Lowering The final Faraday rotator FR200, 20 cm in aperture, is on a
the gain, the spectral width increases from 2.5 to over 3.5 nm at slide table and is easily inserted into the beam path between the

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288 IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 3, MARCH 2004

Fig. 18. 40-cm deformable mirror. The silica plate is 7 mm thick and 40 cm
in diameter and is driven by 37 actuators connected to a personal computer.

pinhole and the output lens of the SF350 tube, whenever it is

necessary for stopping the reflection from the system end (see
[24]).
The beam diameter is 32 cm at the spacial filter exit. The
beam is transported to Target-I room, where a newly inroduced
deformable mirror is sited (see Fig. 18) correcting phase aber- Fig. 19. (a) Ring-interferogram of the wavefront, phase-compensated and
rations on the cross section. A silica plate of 7 mm in thickness observed using a CW YLF alignment beam. (b) Line pattern of (a). (c) Far
and 40 cm in diameter is driven by 37 actuators connected to field of (a).
a personal computer [25]. The head of the actuator is made of
a low-thermal-expansion alloy NOBINITE and is glued to the
rear surface of the mirror with a constant volume of epoxyresin.
A ring-interferogram of the phase-compensated wavefront and
its line pattern are shown in Fig. 19(a) and (b), repectively. The
resultant far field is shown in Fig. 19(c). The size of the central
spot is 21 20 m. A Shack Hartmann sensor is used to check
the wavefront aberration with a microlens array [26]. Analysis
of Figs. 19(a) and (b) shows that the wavefront is corrected to
(peak to valley) or rms all over the cross section.
Chirped pulses from the amplifier chain are directed to the
compressor chamber via four large optics. One is the deformable
miror, which corrects the wavefront errors generated in the am-
plifier chain. The second is a reflection mirror and the two re-
maining are concave and convex lenses, making a Galilean beam Fig. 20. Concave and convex lenses, making Galilean beam expander and
expander, to expand the beam diameter from 32 to 50 cm, as enlarging the beam size from 35 to 50 cm. Deformable mirror and beam-reducer
lens to Incident beam monitor are also seen. This area was now fully covered.
shown in Fig. 20.

VI. PULSE COMPRESSION
A. Compressor Design
We have considered three candidates for the compressor
system, namely single-path four-grating, single-path two-
grating, and double-path two-grating systems. The single-path
four-grating system is the most suitable, but the cost for the
gratings is the most expensive. For the second candidate,
in order to reduce the B integral in the amplifier chain, the
chirp rate must be as large as 0.5 ns/nm, making the grating
separation 20 m, when we use the grating of 1480 grooves/mm
at an incident angle of 48 . As a result, the spatial chirp
width becomes 20 cm for a 3-nm bandwidth, which is too
large for a 50-cm beam and is especially inappropriate for a
doughnut shape. Thus we have used a double-path two-grating
configuration, which is relatively compact and cost-effective.
The compressed pulse intensity is sufficiently high that the
vacuum shielding window must be as thin as a few millimeters
to make the B integral low and to focus the beam as small as
possible. Nevertheless, the thickness of the 50-cm sized window
must be greater than 5 cm to permit a pressure difference of one
atmospheric. In addition, to protect the compressed beam from
the stimulated Raman scattering in the air, we have installed the
compressor system inside a large vacuum chamber and trans-
ported the compressed beam to the focal point in vacuum. The
fused silica windows are antireflection-coated with a sol-gel
layer in our institute factory, which can coat any 1-m size mate-
rial. Thus, the sol-gel coated 57-cm and 6-cm-thick window in-
troduced the 50-cm beam into the vacuum compressor chamber.
Fig. 21 shows the optic configuration inside the chamber, as well
as the incident window (upper one).
Through a similar lower window, a part of the compressed
beam is transported to the incident beam monitor and alignment
package for the compressed pulse (see Fig. 22). The laser en-
ergy, pulse length, SNR, and far and near fields are monitored
here.

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KITAGAWA et al.: PREPULSE-FREE PETAWATT LASER FOR A FAST IGNITOR
Fig. 21. Reflection mirror MR (left), G2 (middle), and kickout mirror M01
(right). Incident window (upper) and monitor window to the incident beam
monitor (lower) on the wall. M01 slides on the long stage driven by the chain
belt, shown in front of the photo.
Fig. 22. Incident beam monitor and alignment package for the compressed
pulse. NFP and FFP are the near- and far-field patterns, respectively.
Initially we have designed the maximum output power to be
500 J using a damage threshold value of 0.56 J/cm for a short
pulse and a fill factor of 70%.
Fig. 23 shows coordinates of each optics inside the compres-
sion chamber, where the three numbers in brackets ( ) are the 3-D
coordinates in millimeters. The first grating G1 with a 94-cm di-
ameter has a side-cut shape and its width is 75 cm. The incident
and diffracted angles are 47 and 55.8 and the groove density
is 1480 grooves/mm. The second grating G2 is top-cut and the
height is 75 cm. The other parameters are the same as for G1.
The separation between the gratings is 970 cm. The compressor
is in a double-pass configuration, which compressed the 1.5-ns
chirped pulse to 500 fs or less. A kickout mirror M01 guides
the compressed pulse to the adjacent focus chamber. The total
efficiency of the compression is estimated to be approximately
70%, since one grating diffraction efficiency is 92% averaged
all over the surface. Thus, an output energy of 500 J needs an
input energy of about 800 J.
The compression chamber is placed on an iron frame at a
height of 7.16 m above the room floor. To suppress any vi-
brations of optics inside the chamber, the frame is made of a
25 cm 25 cm squared column. Two turbomolecular pumps
evacuate the compressor chamber from 1 atmospheric pressure
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289
Fig. 23. Configuration of gratings: G1 and G2 are diffraction gratings, and MR
and M01 are reflection and kickout mirrors, respectively. The incident angle to
G1 is 47 and reflection is 55.8 The numbers in ( ) show the 3-D coordinates
in millimeters.
Fig. 24. (a) Second autocorrelator 2-D image on a CCD at 414-J output:
spectrum in the horizontal direction and the space in vertical. The upper half
of the beam is shown. (b) Spatially integrated spectrum: best fit sech shape
provides 470 fs at FWHM; 7 fs/channel.
to Torr in 3 h and to Torr in 5 h. Simultaneously,
a second turbo-pump evacuates the focusing chamber. To pro-
tect the grating surface from oil contamination, the turbomolec-
ular pumps are connected through mechanical booster pumps to
oil-free dry pumps.
By changing both the distance between the diffraction grating
and the reflection mirror in the stretcher and the separation be-
tween the two compression gratings, we have achieved the am-
plified pulse compression. To align the grating pair of the pulse
compressor, we need to adjust the tilt, groove rotation, and paral-
lelism of the gating planes below their tolerances [4], [27]. Also,
when we align the gratings in open air, we need to remember
that the air refractive index makes 44 mm incremental distance.
290
Fig. 25. Layout of the deformable mirror, expander, compressor, focusing,
monitoring systems, and the target chamber as well. The bold dashed–dot line
is the PW main beam path. G1 and G2 are the diffraction grating pair. Units in
millimeters. Fig. 2 is a view from the right hand side in this figure.
Fig. 26. (a) Compression grating G1 that is 94 cm in diameter, side cut to
74 cm in width in the compressor chamber. (b) Off-axial mirror in the focusing
chamber: the off-axial degree is 21 , the focal length 3.8 m, and the diameter
is 54 cm. To the left of the parabola is the compressed beam entrance hole,
connected to the compression chamber.
Fig. 24(a) shows a second autocorrelator two-dimensional (2-D)
image on a CCD camera at 414-J output: the spectrum is in the
horizontal direction and the spacial image of the upper half of
the beam is in the vertical. Fig. 24(b) is its spatially integrated
spectrum. The smoothed line is the best fit sech shape, which
provides an FWHM of 470 fs. Fig. 25 shows the layout of the
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IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 3, MARCH 2004
Fig. 27. (a) Interferometric image of the blast shield plate; the aberration is
27 . (b) Photo of the plate in mount. (c) Cross section of the assembled blast
shield plate.
deformable mirror, expander, compressor, focusing, monitoring
systems, and the target chamber. The bold dashed–dot line is the
PW main beam path. G1 and G2 are the diffraction grating pair
with all units in millimeters. Fig. 2 is a view from the right-hand
side in this figure.
VII. BEAM FOCUSING
A. Focusing Optics and Blast Shield
A schematic drawing of the compressor, focus optics, and
target chamber are shown in Fig. 25. As shown in Fig. 24, the
focusing system consists of two plain mirrors and an off-axial
parabola mirror 21 off-axial, 3.8 m in focal length (F-number
is 7.6), and 54 cm in diameter, providing an intensity of
W cm or more on target with a spot size of . An
off-axial parabola mirror is precisely adjusted by monitoring the
focus spot in the focus monitor package.
Shown in Fig. 26(a) is the first compression grating, installed
and fixed in the compressor chamber. Fig. 26(b) shows the
off-axial parabola mirror, installed and fixed in the focusing
chamber, which is 2.2 m in diameter and 1.18 m in height
and is connected through a gate valve to the horizontal 8-in
port of the target chamber. In Fig. 26(b), a hole at the left side
of the parabola is the compressed beam entrance from the
compression chamber.
To protect the target debris, a blast shield plate made of Tem-
paxd glass, 1.5 mm thick and 600 mm in diameter, was placed
over the off-axial parabola mirror. Fig. 27(a) shows the inter-
ferogram taken by the Zygo interferometer. The circular fringe
shows a simple spherical aberration of . Fig. 27(b) is the
photo of the plate in mount. Fig. 27(c) shows the cross section
KITAGAWA et al.: PREPULSE-FREE PETAWATT LASER FOR A FAST IGNITOR
Fig. 28. X-ray pinhole photographs of high-power shots. The distance between
0 0
the parabola and target is changed from 2.2 to 0.7 mm near the calculated
0
focal point. The best point was 1.4 mm.
Fig. 29. (a) Calculated and experimental encircled energy on target.
(b) Pinhole image of focal spot on plane by the YLF alignment beam, 30 m
in HMFW.
of the assembled blast shield plate. This plate is sol-gel coated
on both sides. A Teflon packing is inserted to fix this thin glass
to a metal ring mount.
B. Focused Beam Monitoring
The focused beam monitor and alignment package is set on
the counter port of the target chamber, containing two telescopes
of and multiplication, respectively.
As shown in Fig. 28, changing the distance between the off-
axial parabola mirror and a plane target around the best focal
point, we have taken a series of X-ray pinhole photographs of
hundreds of Joule shots. We thus found the brightest and most
noisy image point at 1.4 mm, suggesting that the best focal
depth is 400 m, close to the Rayleigh length
400 m [28]. The noisy dots are mainly due to gamma rays
from the laser-produced hot electrons. The spot size on target
is estimated by the encircled energy on target, as in Fig. 29(a),
where 30% of the energy is concentrated into a 30- m spot.
Fig. 29(b) shows that the spot size of the pinhole image is 30 m
for the YLF alignment beam. From Fig. 29(a), one can see that
20% of 420 J is focused into a 30- m spot in 470 fs, which
implies W cm for the focal intensity.
VIII. CONCLUSION
To heat a pre-imploded high-density plasma, we have con-
structed a prepulse-free Nd:glass PW laser system producing
0.9 PW of peak power. The main specifications of the PW laser
are summarized as follows.
1) For the first time, OPCPA is introduced to the petawatt
laser front end. The gain is or 65 mJ with a width
of 16.5 nm; 23% of conversion and a prepulse ratio of
are achieved.
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291
2) The PW amplifier produced 1.1 kJ of chirped pulse power
at the 1053-nm central wavelength.
3) The gain-narrowing reduction and spectral control
achieved 3.6-nm width and a B integral of 1.4.
4) A serrated aperture and a gashed rod amplifier achieved
a fill factor of 0.62.
5) A pulse of 420 J at 470 fs is delivered on target.
6) Twenty percent of the pulse energy is focused into
a 30- m spot, giving a focal intensity of
W cm .
7) The synchronization jitter between the PW laser and the
GXII green beams is less than 10 ps.
The numerical values are listed in Table II. The completed
petawatt laser now works at a rate of three shots per day, syn-
chronizing with the GXII for the fast ignitor experiments. The
PW laser exactly irradiates the imploded plasma during its stag-
nation period.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the help of all of
the ILE members during the PW construction, and J. Britten,
LLNL, and M. Campbell and M. Perry, General Atomics, for
their useful suggestions and support. Special thanks are due to
the late H. Powell, LLNL. They also thank Prof. K. Ledingham,
the Visiting Professor to the ILE, for his encouragement.
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IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 3, MARCH 2004
Hisanori Fujita was born in Kyoto, Japan, on June 23, 1951. He received the
B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Osaka University,
Osaka, Japan, in 1974, 1976, and 1979, respectively.
He has developed several high-power lasers, including a high-power CO
laser for laser fusion research, and a dye laser pumped by copper vapor lasers
for uranium enrichment. He has been an Associate Professor with the Institute
of Laser Engineering, Osaka University, since 1992.
Ryosuke Kodama was born in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1961. He received the Ph.D.
chirped pulse amplification in  -BAB O crysal,” Opt. Lett., vol. 28, degree from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1990.
pp. 257–259, 2003. Since 2000, he has been an Associate Professor with the Institute of Laser
[13] A. Dubietis, G. Jonusauskas, and A. Piskarskas, “Powerful femtosecond Engineering, Osaka University, working on laser fusion. From 1990 to 1996, he
pulse generation by chirped and stretched pulse parametric amplification conducted X-ray laser research and demonstrated the world’s smallest beam-di-
in BBO crystal,” Opt. Commun., vol. 88, pp. 437–440, 1992. vergence X-ray laser. In 1994, he began studying fast ignitors and demonstrated
[14] I. N. Ross, P. Matousek, M. Towrie, A. J. Langley, and J. L. Collier, fast heating of imploded plasmas using a novel target geometry in 2000. In 2002,
“The prospects for ultrashort pulse duration and ultrahigh intensity using he demonstrated PW heating of imploded plasmas, encouraging fast ignition in
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[15] X. Yang, Z.-Z. Xu, Y.-X. Leng, H.-H. Lu, L.-H. Lin, Z.-Q. Zhang, R.-X. velopment in 1993 and the Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award in 2002 for
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ch. 17.

Yoneyoshi Kitagawa was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1945. He received the Doc-
torate of Science from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1974.
Since 1984, he has been an Associate Professor with the Institute of Laser
Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, working on laser-plasma interac-
tions. In 1992, he first demonstrated the laser acceleration of high-energy elec-
trons. In 2000, as the project leader, he completed the Petawatt Laser, the highest
power laser in the world, at the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University.
He has published over 170 papers and 11 books as an author or coauthor.
Prof. Kitagawa is the technical committee member both of the photon and ra-
diation research committee of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute and
of the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, Ministry of Educa-
tion, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Hisao Kitamura is a Senior Research Assistant with the Institute of Laser En-
gineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
Tadashi Kanabe was born in Okayama, Japan, in 1959. He received the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electromagnetic energy engineering from Osaka Univer-
sity, Osaka, Japan, 1983 and 1987, respectively.
In 1987, he joined the Institute for Laser Technology, Osaka, Japan. In 1992,
he was appointed to the staff of the Department of Electromagnetic Energy En-
gineering, Osaka University, where he is now a Lecturer. His current research
interests are in the developments of the diode-pumped solid-state laser system
and the high-power glass laser system.

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KITAGAWA et al.: PREPULSE-FREE PETAWATT LASER FOR A FAST IGNITOR 293

Shuji Sakabe received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Osaka University, Keisuke Shigemori is a Research Associate with the Institute of Laser Engi-
Osaka, Japan, in 1978 and 1985, respectively. neering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
He then joined the Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE), Osaka University.
He joined the Max-Planck Instituet fuer Quantenoptik, Munich, Germany,
from 1985 to 1986 for laser-plasma X-ray research with the iodine laser
facility Asterix. He moved to ILE as a Research Associate in 1986, where
he was involved in research on laser isotope separation. He moved to the
Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, in 1989 and started the
development of table-top high-power short-pulse lasers and the research of its Noriaki Miyanaga is a Professor with the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka
applications. In 1996, he became an Associate Professor with the Graduate University, Osaka, Japan.
School of Engineering, Osaka University. In 2003, he became a Professor with
the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, and his
current research interests are high-power short-pulse lasers, their applications
to laser-matter interaction physics, high-energy particle generation in laser
plasmas, laser-induced nuclear reactions, and laser applications to chemistry
and material science.
Prof. Sakabe was the recipient of the Prize of Laser Engineering: Medal of Yasukazu Izawa is the Director of and a Professor with the Institute of Laser
Excellent Review Paper from Laser Society of Japan in 1998. Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.

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