Technological development in Multi Petawatt laser system

The Central Laser Facility is devoted to developing and to providing world leading high power laser systems to the laser plasma research community.
Current development programme is focused on Chirped Pulse Amplification and on ultrashort laser pulses (<30fs), aiming to pushing the limit of laser technology for the peak power (multi PW) and repetition rate.
The proposed CDT thesis will be part of the major development project ongoing in the department. Possible research projects, depending of the actual situation at the start of the placement, are:
- Development of high repetition rate flashlamp pumped Nd:glass disk laser amplifier;
- Developing feedback systems to improve pointing and pulse duration stability of petawatt class laser system;
- Development of novel ultrashort laser diagnostics;
- Studying nonlinear crystal tiling for multi-petawatt optical parametric amplifier;
- Design and test large side optical parametric chirped pulse amplified laser system;
- Develop a simulation code aiming to study the influence of the quality of the optics and the mechanical stability on the final parameters of multi-petawatt laser systems;
- Optical design and alignment of Chirped Pulse Amplification scheme (stretcher and Compressor), including beam expansion and propagation.