The CPL-020-QSG, a 2J, 10Hz, 532nm pump laser, was the first of many high-pulse energy laser systems (HELs) designed and manufactured by Cutting Edge Optronics (CEO) at their St. Charles, MO facility. The laser is a key component of the High-repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS), designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and installed and operating as an important part of the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines facility based just outside of Prague, Czechia.
Built ten years ago, the CPL-020-QSG continues to perform flawlessly at its specified operational level, as demonstrated in one recent experiment described in this article from Optics.org. An excerpt from the article reads, “The lead researcher at LLNL, Matthew Hill, explained, “Our goal was to demonstrate robust diagnosis of laser-accelerated ions and electrons from solid targets at a high intensity and repetition rate. Supported by rapid feedback from a machine-learning optimisation algorithm to the laser front end, it was possible to maximise the total ion yield of the system.”
A brief history of the CPL-020-QSG
CEO delivered the CPL-020-QSG to LLNL in Livermore, California in late 2014, where it was installed and commissioned in early 2015. LLNL is renowned for having achieved fusion ‘ignition’ at its National Ignition Facility (NIF), where more fusion energy is generated than the amount of laser energy delivered to the target; an important step towards the dream of ‘clean’ nuclear fusion power.
CPL-020-QSG is used as a pump laser in LLNL’s Ti:Sapphire chirped-pulse amplifier (CPA). “HAPLS is designed to ultimately generate a peak power greater than 1 petawatt (1015 or 1 quadrillion watts), with each pulse delivering 30 joules of energy in less than 30 femtoseconds (trillionths of a second or 0.00000000000003 seconds)—the time it takes light to travel a fraction of the width of a human hair. […] Delivering more than 1 petawatt at this extreme repetition rate is a major advancement over current petawatt systems, which cannot fire more often than once per second.” (LLNL, 2014).
LLNL incorporated the CPL-020-QSG into the HAPLS in California and then shipped the entire HAPLS system to the ELI Beamlines facility, where it has been operational since 2018 for studying laser-matter interactions, laser-driven secondary sources, and fundamental physics at ultrahigh light intensities.
Present Day
Today, the CPL-020-QSG is still pumping the CPA in HAPLS at ELI Beamlines and performing cutting-edge scientific research, with very little realignment necessary between shipments from Missouri to California to Czechia, or thereafter. Its stability, reliability, and long lifetime prove that all-diode pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers are a key component of high repetition rate, high energy laser systems. Over the past ten years, CEO has continued to innovate in the field of DPSS HELs. In 2024, CEO delivered its latest in a long line of high energy lasers to Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the CPL-070-QSF: a 7J, 10Hz, 527nm, 4ns temporally shaped pulse OPCPA pump laser.
Read about CEO’s HELs in this white paper. Even higher pulse energies and faster repetition rates are on the horizon at CEO.
Approved for Public Release: NG24-2401© 2024, Northrop Grumman.
