Origin of the coherent contrast pedestal in petawatt laser pulses
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Hooker, Chris; Tang, Yunxin; Chekhlov, Oleg; Collier, John; Divall, Edwin; Ertel, Klaus; Hawkes, Steve; Rajeev, Paramel P
- Source
- CLEO: 2011 - Laser Science to Photonic Applications Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), 2011 Conference on. :1-2 May, 2011
- Subject
- Photonics and Electrooptics
Gratings
Laser theory
Mirrors
Measurement by laser beam
Laser beams
Optical pulses
- Language
- ISSN
- 2160-8989
We demonstrate experimentally that the “coherent” contrast pedestal in compressed pulses from CPA lasers originates from the diffraction gratings in the pulse stretcher. The pedestal intensity correlates with the level of scatter from the gratings.