Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification for the LIL-Petawatt front-End: Design and first results

We present the design of the front-end for the French LIL multi-Petawatt laser facility (PETAL) based on OPCPA architecture. The expected output energy at 1053 nm is up to 150 mJ of spatially flat top square pulse and programmable temporal shape. The stretched pulse duration is 9 ns with 16 nm spectral width. We present the first results for the pump module with a highly stable pulse, with energy of 2 J before doubling, and with a beam spatially monomode and monochromatic.