Enhancement of contrast ratio in chirped pulse amplified laser system by cross-polarized wave generation

This paper reports our experimental research on the laser contrast ratio enhancement in the XL-Ⅲ (eXtreme Light Ⅲ) facility with the technology of cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation. Based on the theoretical analysis of the relerant principles, we introduced an XPW filter in the facility, which was upgraded with a double chirped pulse amplification (DCPA) scheme. Under optimized system design and alignment, we measured the conversion efficiency from fundamental wave to cross-polarized wave to be higher than 10%. The pre-pulses in nanosecond scale were deeply suppressed and the contrast ratio in picosecond scale was enhanced from 10-5 to 10-7. Our results show the XPW generation provides an effective technique to improve the contrast ratio of a Chirped-pulse amplification laser system, which is a key issue in ultrahigh intensity laser-matter researches.