Simulating spatiotemporal dynamics of ultra-intense ultrashort lasers through imperfect grating compressors

Abstract

The upcoming 100 Petawatt (PW) laser is going to provide a possibility to experimentally study vacuum physics. Pulse compression and beam focusing, which can be affected by the spatiotemporal coupling, are two key processes of generating a 100 PW laser and then determine whether its physical objective can be achieved or not. We improved our previous model of the spatiotemporal coupling where only the grating wavefront error and the output optical field of a common compressor configuration were included, and in the improved model, the grating amplitude modulation, the spatio-spectral clipping, and the optical field inside the compressor were added. By using it, we theoretically investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of an ultra-intense ultrashort laser passing through an imperfect grating compressor for different cases, especially the spatio-temporal/spectral coupling and the on-target intensity variation induced by the phase and amplitude modulation at different grating positions in two different compressor configurations. This study is of importance for both engineering development and physical application of the upcoming Exawatt-class laser.