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Appendix A: Technical Background Summaries
Pages 155-171

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From page 155...
... Polarization can be linear, but it can also be circular or elliptical, in which case the electric field oscillates in direction as well as amplitude. Laser beams may be bright or dim, may exist at visible or invisible wavelengths, may contain a narrow or a broad range of wavelengths, and may be more or less divergent.
From page 156...
... Petawatt lasers do not generally pulse at high rate, but rather they store energy and then release it in a "single shot." Many other types of lasers have less per-shot energy but achieve high average power through high pulse repetition rates. Intensity Intensity is power per unit area, usually at the waist, or narrowest part, of a ­ocused laser beam, usually measured using the mixed unit Watts/cm2.
From page 157...
... In highintensity laser physics one often encounters the normalized vector potential a, which is the vector potential in units of mc, where m is the electron mass and c is the speed of light. Pulse Length and Duration A third important quantity for high-powered lasers is pulse length and duration, which may be as short as a few cycles -- a few microns for visible laser light, corresponding to a pulse duration of a few femtoseconds -- or as long as a meter, corresponding to three nanoseconds duration.
From page 158...
... In addition, ampli fied laser pulses nearly always contain a temporal pedestal much longer than the central peak due to the gain dynamics. This becomes important in high-intensity laser ­matter interactions, where damage to the target may be induced by the ­pedestal long before the central peak arrives.
From page 159...
... An early breakthrough in this direction was Q-switching, a means developed in the 1960s to store energy in the gain medium over a long time and then extract it as laser energy over a short time. This led pulse durations on the order of the time for light to make a round trip in the laser cavity, generally 5 to 10 nanoseconds.
From page 160...
... The laser energy takes the form of a very short pulse, which passes through the mode locker during its point of maximum transmission on every round-trip through the cavity. The shortest pulse possible is set by the frequency range over which a given laser material provides amplification (the laser gain bandwidth)
From page 161...
... crystal are much better compared to the oxide glasses used in high-energy systems, allowing Ti:sapphire to operate at pulse rates limited by the pump laser, and PW-class Ti:sapphire systems to operate at pulse rates of 1 to 10 pulses/sec, compared to the pulse/hour rate for energetic glass lasers. Commercial Chirped-Pulse Amplification Lasers Many aspects of the high-intensity physics phenomena of interest in this report have been developed using commercialized, tabletop-scale weaker (i.e., terawatt)
From page 162...
... They utilize ultrarelativistic intense electron beams as a gain medium, produced in long traveling-wave radio frequency accelerator struc tures located at large national accelerator laboratories in the United States, Europe, and Japan. These facilities are quite expensive, on the order of $1 billion.
From page 163...
... With a petawatt laser focused to only 1020 W/cm2, the boosted intensity would exceed the "Schwinger limit," the intensity required to break down the vacuum, and this novel environment has been suggested as a laboratory for exotic phenomena in particle physics. In subsequent sections of this report the committee provides more detailed discussions of the technology basis for present PW-class lasers, prospects for future technologies that will lead to higher peak powers as well as higher pulse rates, and status of PW-class laser capabilities specific to the United States.
From page 164...
... Total expenditures on these facilities are reported to be in the range of $4 billion.1 The laser gain material of choice for most of the lasers under construction now is titanium-doped sapphire, which utilizes CPA and can efficiently convert the excitation by long energetic pulses of lower-powered laser light from more conven tional lasers into extremely short and powerful laser pulses at a central wavelength of about 800 nm. Other choices for petawatt-class lasers under current construction or in advanced design include CPA with mixed glass lasers, a nonlinear conversion method called optical parametric CPA, or OPCPA.
From page 165...
... Laser-Electron Colliders Scaling Limits The benefits to combining high-intensity lasers with relativistic particle beams have several paths to scaling since the intensity in the rest frame of the electron scales as γ 2. In an earlier configuration designed to create weak vector boson particles, the SLAC accelerator generated 45GeV electrons, or γ = 90,000.
From page 166...
... BIO Biological Sciences BOC Balanced optical cross correlator BSM Beyond the Standard Model CAEP Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics CALA Centre for Advanced Laser Applications (Ger.) CALGO CaAlGdO4, a laser crystal host for Yb CAMOS Committee on AMO Science (NAS)
From page 167...
... P DLA Direct Laser Acceleration DOD Department of Defense DOE Department of Energy DOT Department of Transportation DPA Divided pulse amplification DPSSL Diode-pumped solid state laser DRACO Dresden Laser Acceleration Source (Germany) DRC Dynamic ramp compression EDP Extraction during pumping EEHG Echo effect harmonic generation ELBE Electronic Linac for beams with high Brilliance and low Emmitance ELI European Laser Infrastructure ENG Engineering ERDF European Regional Development Funds ERIC European Research Infrastructure Consortium ESFRI European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructure EUV Extreme ultraviolet FAIR Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research FAP Sr5(PO4)
From page 168...
... GSI Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung HAPLS High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System HED High energy density HEDP High energy density physics HEDS High energy density science HEL High energy, continuous-wave lasers HEP High energy physics HGHG High-gain harmonic generation HHG High harmonic generation HIL High intensity laser HPLS High power laser system HSG Human salivary gland HXR Hard X-ray HZDR Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf Laboratory IAP Institute of Applied Physics ICAN International Coherent Amplification Network ICF Inertial confinement fusion ICFA International Committee for Future Accelerators ICUIL International Committee for Ultra-Intense Lasers IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers ILE Institute of Laser Engineering (Jap.) INFLPR National Institute for Laser, Plasma, and Radiation Physics INRS Institut national de la reserche scientifique (Can.)
From page 169...
... Appendix A 169 Acronym Definition LANL Los Alamos National Lab LASIK Laser-Assisted In-situ Keratomileusis LBNL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory LBO Lithium triborate LCLS Linac Coherent Light Source LFEX Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment LHC Large Hadron Collider LIBRA Laser Induced Beams of Radiation and Applications LIBS Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy LLE Laboratory for Laser Energetics LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory LMJ Laser Mégajoule (Fr.) LMU Ludwig-Maximillian University LOCSET Locking of optical coherence by single-detector frequency tagging LPA Laser-plasma accelerators LSW Light scattering through a wall LWFA laser wakefield accelerator MEC Matter in extreme conditions MFE magnetic fusion energy MOKE Magneto-optic Kerr effect MPQ Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics MPS Mathematical and Physical Sciences MRI Magnetic resonance imaging MTW Multi-terawatt MURI Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative NIF National Ignition Facility NIH National Institutes of Health NNSA National Nuclear Security Administration NOPA Non-collinear optical parametric amplifier NRF Nuclear resonance fluorescence NSF National Science Foundation OAP Off-axis paraboloid OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ONCORAY Center for Radiation Research in Oncology ONR Office of Naval Research
From page 170...
... PEARL PEtawatt pARametric Laser PENELOPE Petawatt, Energy-Efficient Laser for Optical Plasma Experiments PET Positron emission tomography PETAL PETawatt Aquitane Laser PFC Physics Frontier Center PHELIX Petawatt High Energy Laser for heavy Ion eXperiments POLARIS Petawatt Optical Laser Amplifier for Radiation Intensive experimentS PSAAP Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program PULSE Photon Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering PW Petawatt QED Quantum Electrodynamics QST Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology RAL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory RAS Russian Academy of Science ROI Return on investment SACLA Spring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser SASE Self-Amplified Stimulated Emission SAUUL Science and Applications of Ultrafast Ultra-intense Lasers SBE Social, Behavioral, and Economics Sciences SBIR Small Business Innovation Research SC Office of Science (DOE) SCAPA Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators SEL Station of Extreme Light Science SIOM Institute for Optics and Fine Mechanics (China)
From page 171...
... TARPES Time and angle-resolved photoemission TBD To be determined TMI Thermally induced mode instability UFE Ultra-broadband front end UFL Russian acronym for their megajoule-class laser USN United States Navy VSF Image relay (in vacuum) VUV Vacuum ultraviolet WDM Warm dense matter WLC White-light continuum WWII World War II XCAN Extreme Coherent Amplification Network (see also ICAN)


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