Ultraintense, ultra-short pulse lasers are now mainly based on Titanium-Sapphire (Ti:Sa) technology which, however, in turn requires flash-lamp pumped, frequency doubled neodymium lasers as optical pumping sources. The applications of these ultra-short pulse lasers, like those envisaged by the EuPRAXIA facility, is currently limited by the average power, currently of a few tens of Watts. Recently, the development of diode pumping instead of flash-lamp pumping, allows the creation of high energy (100 J per pulse) and high average power (kW) sources for the pumping of Ti:Sa lasers. With these developments it is expected that average power between 1 and 10 kW can be reached for scientific uses. Beyond these average power levels, the Ti-Sa schemes are however considered unsuitable and inefficient and we look at other technologies with direct laser diode pumping, where the main large bandwidth gain medium is pumped directly with laser diodes.
The aim of the project is the development and realization of a high efficiency and high repetition rate ultrashort pulse laser prototype. In particular, the development of a development platform for a demonstration laser system capable of providing impulses with TW peak powers, repetition kHz and average power kW is expected. The acquired knowledge and the know-how of the realization phase will allow to design further amplification stages to reach higher average powers.