Abstracts Category : Other

Simulation and optimization of a multi-TW few-cycle optical parametric synthesizer

by Oskar Hallberg

The Light Wave Synthesizer 20 (LWS20) is an Optical Parametric Synthesizer (OPS) system used for relativistic attosecond physics research. The LWS20 performs OPS through the means of multiple two-color pumped Noncollinear Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplication (NOPCPA) stages. NOPCPA is basedon the nonlinear optical effect Optical Parametric Amplication (OPA) which is only described analytically through simplied expressions. A natural route around this difficulty is through the means of numerical models. In this thesis a (2+1) dimensional simulation software [1], [2] is used to simulate the four currently present NOPCPA stages of the LWS20, operated under two different options. The simulationwill be key to the planned upgrade of the LWS20, propelling the system fromthe current 16 TW power [3] to the wanted 100 TW power domain. It is shown that the used software is able to, with some caveats, emulate the results achieved in a laboratory environment and that the two operational options are optimized under slightly different settings. Furthermore, some barely documented, albeit crucial, features of the simulation software have been exposed, indicating that it is not very well optimized for simulating the OPA processes of the LWS20. By increasing the pump energy of the simulation beyond the realisticlevel it is still possible to attain relatively realistic amplication and thus the software ought to prove a valuable tool for the planned system upgrade. Some alternative approaches to the continuation of the simulations are presented which would further increase the softwares usefulness in the process of expanding theLWS20. Historically, the LWS20 has been operated successfully under the sameconditions under the two possible operational options, but the simulations clearly show that an optimized set-up for one option is far from optimal for the other option. Therefore, there is a possibility to further optimize the LWS20, an idea worth pursuing in future experiments.