Telescopic system for Zettawatt equivalent laser # Telescope # Engineering # Laser

Optical Surfaces Ltd. was chosen by Gerard Moore Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences (CUOS) in University of Michigan (USA) to provide beam expansion optics for its revolutionary Zettawatt-equivalent ultrashort pulsed laser system (ZEUS).

Sponsored by the US National Science Foundation, the ZEUS laser facility is being built to allow the petave laser pulse from one of its beam lines to collide with a beam of electrons with GeV energy generated by its other line. In this collision, the electrons will meet Zettawatt (10²¹ watts) equivalent laser power measured in their resting frame.

John Neyes, a scientist at CUOS, said: “Construction of the ZEUS facility began in 2020 and is expected to become operational in 2024. Among its many challenges, the Cirped Pulse Boost Laser System (CPA **) requires’ aberration – free ‘telescope for delivering fully amplified pulses in safe flow to a 3-peta compressor, where their power is increased 50,000 times for experimental use. The telescope consists of a convex aspherical mirror with a diameter of 170 mm and a 255 mm positive spherical mirror used in off-axis design. As a leading manufacturer of ultra-high precision Petawatt laser optics, we have chosen Optical Surfaces Ltd. for the production of precision mirror substrates, which will be coated and used to expand the diameter of the pulsed beam from 140 mm to 305 mm. He added: “I really appreciate the energetic answers of Optical Surfaces to my inquiries while planning the telescope. Their experienced contribution gave me a good level of comfort in moving the project forward.

Sales Director at Optical Surfaces Ltd. – Dr. Aris Kuris commented “We are honored to be selected by CUOS as a supplier of high-precision beam expander for this prestigious project. With this ZEUS laser system, the CUOS team is excited about the opportunity to study quantum electrodynamics, the dominant explanation for how the universe works on a subatomic level. In addition, ZEUS can help develop new methods and technologies for use in medicine, defense, materials science and astrophysics.

Worldwide, only a few optical manufacturers can produce off-axis optics as part of a supply system with sufficient surface quality to allow ultra-powerful lasers to focus their enormous energy on targets as small as a few microns. Under these extreme conditions, laser-matter interactions can produce energy beams from electrons and protons, as well as bright, coherent X-ray sources that allow researchers to address fundamental issues in areas including plasma physics, X-ray radiography, proton therapy and rapid experiments with inflammation. Using in-house manufacturing techniques developed over the past 50 years and taking advantage of an extremely stable production environment, highly immune to vibration and thermal variation, the company’s experienced and qualified engineering team can produce fast-focusing off-axis mirrors with unmatched surface accuracy. surface errors in quality and surface slope.

The company’s approved ISO 9001-2015 production facilities and test facilities are deep underground in a series of tunnels dug in hard chalk. This provides an environment in which the temperature is naturally thermally stable and the vibrations are extremely low. Under such stable conditions, testing of high-precision mirrors, especially with long road lengths, becomes quantitative and reliable. In addition to these natural benefits, Optical Surfaces has invested in a wide range of test equipment and developed methods to ensure accurate and reliable tests.

For more information on the pioneering work of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences (CUOS) at the University of Michigan, visit https://zeus.engin.umich.edu/. To discuss the development of ultra-high precision optics for your powerful laser device, please contact Optical Surfaces Ltd at + 44-208-668-6126 or [email protected].

** The invention of the laser pulse amplification system (CPA) was the basis for the awarding of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics to Gerard Moore and Donna Strickland. See