Ultra High-Intensity OPCPA Laser Systems and Light-Matter Autocorrelation

This project is a collaboration between Imperial College and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) to develop and exploit a new generation of ultra-high intensity lasers. RAL is currently upgrading the UK's Vulcan National Laser Facility (used to support a broad range of World class research activities) to create one of the world's most powerful systems. The aim is to be able to deliver 20 Petawatts of peak power in a 20 femtosecond pulse to enable experiments in fields including fusion energy, advanced medical imaging, and national security. A key element of this laser is the use of Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification (OPCPA) in which a stretched light pulse is amplified several million times or more by instantaneous transfer of energy from one laser to another in a non-linear optical crystal. This is much more complex than a traditional laser, but allows for creation of the very high quality sub-picosecond light pulses needed to drive experiments in areas such as particle beam acceleration and x-ray imaging. A key element of this project will be the development and testing of parametric amplification systems (particularly by characterising their unwanted parametric fluorescence noise) and the creation and refinement of supporting numerical models. This will be linked to specific "end use" requirements at RAL (likely including some on-site work there), for very high-contrast / low noise laser pulses.
As part of this project we will also aim to use OPCPA for the 1st time to create a fundamentally new measurement technique that can time resolve the details of a particle beam (or other process that perturbs the vacuum fluctuation background) with unprecedented detail, with perhaps just a few femtosecond time resolution. We believe that this could lead to a "light matter autocorrelation" technique with applications in next generation high-energy physics experiments.