Pulse compression and suppression of gain narrowing in a PW Nd:glass laser

Summary form only given. We are developing a high intensity chirped pulse amplification (CPA) Nd:glass laser to investigate the fast igniter concept as a new approach towards high gain inertial confinement fusion. The 100 TW, 50 J, 0.5 ps pulses have been focused onto high-density compressed plasmas produced by the GEKKO-XII (12 beam, 20 kJ) laser since 1997. During 2000, the 100 TW laser system was upgraded to 1 PW by introducing a large pulse compressor, which consisted of a parallel gold grating pair with 1-m diameter.