Spatiotemporal compression of ultrashort pulses is one of the key issues of chirped pulse amplification (CPA), the most common method to achieve high intensity laser beams. Successful shaping of the temporal envelope and recombination of the spectral components of the broadband pulses need careful alignment of the stretcher-compressor stages. Pulse parameters are required to be measured at the target as well. Several diagnostic techniques have been developed so far for the characterization of ultrashort pulses. Some of these methods utilize nonlinear optical processes, while others based on purely linear optics, in most cases, combined with spectrally resolving device. The goal of this work is to provide a review on the capabilities and limitations of the latter category of the ultrafast diagnostical methods. We feel that the importance of these powerful, easy-to-align, high-precision techniques needs to be emphasized, since their use could gradually improve the efficiency of different CPA systems. We give a general description on the background of spectrally resolved linear interferometry and demonstrate various schematic experimental layouts for the detection of material dispersion, angular dispersion and carrier-envelope phase drift. Precision estimations and discussion of potential applications are also provided.

A colliding microjet liquid sheet target system was developed and tested for pairs of round nozzles of 10, 11 and 18 μm in diameter. The sheet’s position stability was found to be better than a few micrometers. Upon interaction with 50 mJ laser pulses, the 18 μm jet has a resonance amplitude of 16 μm at a repetition rate of 33 Hz, while towards 100 Hz it converges to 10 μm for all nozzles. A white-light interferometric system was developed to measure the liquid sheet thickness in the target chamber both in air and in vacuum, with a measurement range of 182 nm–1 μm and an accuracy of ±3%. The overall shape and 3D shape of the sheet follow the Hasson–Peck model in air. In vacuum versus air, the sheet gradually loses 10% of its thickness, so the thinnest sheet achieved was below 200 nm at a vacuum level of 10^–4 mbar, and remained stable for several hours of operation.

We present a laser-based neutron source that produces 1.8 × 10 5 neutrons/s with a conversion rate of 7.8 × 10 5 neutrons/J . Laser pulses of 12 fs and 23 mJ were focused onto a 430 -nm -thick heavy water liquid sheet at a 10 Hz repetition rate. The resulting peak intensity of 4 × 10 18 W/cm 2 accelerated deuterium ions from the target rear side to a kinetic energy of 1 MeV. This deuteron beam induced H 2 ( d , n ) 3 He fusion reactions in a deuterated polyethylene target, producing fast neutrons. The neutron yield was measured using two independent detection systems: the LILITH time-of-flight spectrometer, consisting of eight plastic scintillators covering nearly 180 ∘ , and a calibrated bubble detector spectrometer. The neutron yield per laser shot is 35 times higher than that recently achieved by lasers with comparable pulse energies, while the conversion rate is the highest ever achieved by continuously operating, sub-100 fs lasers. The generated neutrons are emitted from an area of 0.65 cm 2 corresponding to the deuteron beam spot on the catcher. Their angular distribution is peaked in forward and backward directions in agreement with the literature data on the angular distribution of H 2 ( d , n ) 3 He reaction. The system operated continuously for several hours per day with an unprecedented stability of 5 % .

Applications based on photonic crystal fibers depend strongly on their dispersion properties that might differ from the desired specifications due to deficiencies in the manufacturing process. Since dispersion characteristics might also be affected by the placement of the fiber, in this paper the effect of various placements on the chromatic dispersion properties of a commercially available HC-800-02 photonic crystal fiber was investigated between 760 and 870 nm with Fourier-transform spectral interferometry. To test the scaling of dispersion with fiber length, samples of different lengths ranging from 10 to 97 cm were used in the measurements. It was found that the dispersion properties of the orthogonal directions were different. The dispersion parameter showed small dependence on the placement and fiber length. The polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) of the fiber was measured using an indirect and a direct technique. To retrieve the PMD directly in the case of the shorter fibers where the fringes were too sparse for the Fourier method, the so-called minima-maxima method was employed. The precision was comparable with both techniques; however, the direct approach proved to be more accurate when longer samples were measured, and the indirect method seemed to be more reliable in the case of shorter fibers.

We developed a versatile 100 Hz laser system based on negatively and positively chirped pulse amplification. The few-cycle output provides pulses with 7.1 fs and 0.25 mJ, while the power output supports 26 fs pulses with 50 mJ. The energy as well as the pulse duration stability of the system are below 1%, while the pointing stability is within 25% of the diffraction-limited spot size. We also show applications in high repetition rate target development and preparation for a laser-generated X-ray source for industrial CT imaging.