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Description
The efficient, post-compression of high-energy Petawatt (PW) scale laser pulses toward the fundamental limit of a single-cycle pulse duration offers a path to extreme peak intensities without the need for adding additional costly energy amplification. Instead the existing pulse energy is redistributed in the generation of additional spectral bandwidth and further compressed through subsequent spectral phase compensation to produce the increased intensities. The proposed Thin Film Compressor (TFC) promises to offer an efficient and affordable method to boost the peak pulse achievable with existing facilities. Recent measurements at the CETAL PW laser based at the National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics (INFLPR) show the spectra from a small-scale TFC configuration to be recompressible to shorter than the original measured pulse duration (near the limit of the available diagnostic tool) using films of both cellulose acetate and PMMA. These early experimental results show great promise for pulse compression but suggest that additional diagnostics and sampling methods must be implemented at the facilities that will allow for continued studies of single-cycle pulses.
