The LUCIA project: towards 100 joules nanosecond pulses, kW averaged power, based on ytterbium diode pumped solid state laser

Summary form only given. We show that diode pumped Yb:YAG lasers are particularly good candidates for femtosecond pulse applications, because centimeter-scale size aperture YAG crystals are easily available, their heat generation is reduced relative to Nd:YAG and high power laser diodes are available at the required pump wavelength. We designed the LUCIA laser system to consist of: an oscillator delivering a few mJ in about 10 ns, a large mode regenerative pre-amplifier relying on a phase mask and a multi-pass two-heads amplifier stage. We discuss issues such as the cooling of the amplifier head, and the architecture of the amplifier stage based on angular and vectorial multiplexing implying a high average power Pockel's cell, and present the first experimental results in support of simulations.