Generation of high-contrast, joule-level pulses based on Nd:glass chirped pulse amplification laser

We demonstrate a high-contrast, joule-level Nd:glass laser system operating at 0.5 Hz repetition rate based on a double chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme. By injecting high-contrast, high-energy seed pulses into the Nd:glass CPA stage, the pulse energy is amplified to 1.9 J through two optical parametric CPA stages and two Nd:glass amplifiers. The temporal contrast of compressed pulse is measured down to the level of 10−8 at tens of ps, and 10−10 near 200 ps before the main pulse, respectively.