Current status and development of the 10 Hz, 1 picosecond, 2 J and 10 J Yb:YAG CPA amplifiers of the Petawatt Field Synthesizer

Summary form only given. The Petawatt Field Synthesizer (PFS) is an OPCPA driven light source that is currently being developed at the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik in Garching, Germany. The target parameters are few-cycle, waveform-controlled light pulses with a repetition rate of 10 Hz and a peak power in the Petawatt regime [1]. The system relies on a cascaded broadband OPCPA that is pumped by a picosecond, all-diode-pumped Yb:YAG chirped-pulse-amplification (CPA) laser chain, the PFS pumplaser. In its final version, the pump laser has to deliver nanosecond pulses with energies above 10 J at a wavelength of 1030 nm that can be compressed down to 1 picosecond and converted to 515 nm. Here, we report on the design and current performance of the new 2 J amplifier and discuss the design and ongoing development of the final 10 J amplifier.