Progress of the Development of New Vulcan PW OPCPA Beamline

The Petawatt beamline at the Vulcan laser facility is capable of delivering pulses with 500 J of energy in <; 500 fs at a repetition rate of 20 mins [1], and is used to study laser matter interactions under extreme conditions. To improve the capability and flexibility of the facility we are developing an additional PW beamline based on OPCPA technology [4,5]. The main advantages of the OPCPA are the high single pass gain, lower thermal effects as well as ability to support amplification of broad spectrum [6], which are crucial elements to generate intense pulses at higher repetition rate. The specifications for this beamline are that it will deliver 30 J pulses with 30 fs pulse duration and a final repetition rate of a shot every 5 mins. The combination of the two short pulse beams will enable experiments to study proton and electron probing of plasma interactions.