Since their invention, lasers have been extremely effective to improve our understanding of the molecular and atomic structure of matter and the associated dynamical events. However, laser pulse energy was not enough to probe deeper – into nucleons and their components the quarks or to dissociate the vacuum. A new type of large-scale laser infrastructure specifically designed to produce the highest peak power and focused intensity was established by the European Community: the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI). ELI was designed to be the first exawatt class laser facility, equivalent to 1000 times the National Ignition Facility (NIF) power. Producing kJ of power over 10 fs, ELI will afford wide benefits to society ranging from improvement of oncology treatment, medical and biomedical imaging, fast electronics and our understanding of aging nuclear reactor materials to development of new methods of nuclear waste processing.
The facility will be based on four sites. Three of them are implemented in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania.
ELI-ALPS based in Szeged (Hungary), one of the three pillars of the Extreme Light Infrastructure, will further deepen knowledge in fundamental physics by providing high repetition rate intense light pulses on the attosecond timescale. Current technological limitations will be overcome by use of novel concepts. The main technological backbone of ELI-ALPS will be optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) of few-cycle to sub-cycle laser pulses.
Pumped by dedicated all-solid-state short-pulse (ps-scale) sources and their (low-order) harmonics, this approach will be competitive with conventional (Ti:sapphire-laser-based) femtosecond technology in terms of pumping efficiency and will dramatically outperform previous technologies in terms of average power, contrast, bandwidth, and – as a consequence – degree of control of the generated radiation. The ELI-ALPS laser architecture will consist of three main laser beamlines, operating at different regimes of repetition rates and peak powers: High Repetition Rate (HR): 100 kHz,>5 mJ, <6 fs, Single Cycle (SYLOS): 1 kHz, >100 mJ, < 5 fs, High Field (HF): 10 Hz, 34 J, <17 fs.
The Single Cycle Laser SYLOS1 (the first stage of the SYLOS project), which employs OPCPA technology developed at Vilnius University, has been designed and manufactured by a consortium of two Lithuanian companies – Ekspla and Light Conversion.
The consortium won SYLOS1 procurement tender in 2014. The system was installed in 15 May 2019 and produces Carrier Envelope Phase (CEP) stabilized, 6.6 fs laser pulses with a peak power of >5 TW and an average power of 35 W at 1 kHz repetition rate. To the best of our knowledge, this is currently the highest average power produced by a multi-TW few-cycle OPCPA system.
Despite of its uniqueness and extremely high power, the current state of SYLOS laser system already sets a new standard of reliability in ultrafast laser technology.
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