Pulse compression using angular multiplexing in a high-gain 1.7 kJ amplifier

Pulse compression using angular multiplexing is demonstrated on a large-scale hydrogen-fluoride (HF) laser system. For a train of two 24 ns pulses, the essential elements of this scheme are evaluated as a function of interpulse separation time. Included are energy-extraction efficiency, overall temporal pulse distortion, leading-edge contrast-ratio distortion, and suppression of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) relative to a single long-duration input pulse. For appropriate interpulse delay time, we show that distortionless amplification is possible with energy-extraction efficiency, as is obtained using a single input beam having a pulsewidth equal to the duration of the amplifier gain.