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The High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS), being developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and destined for the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines facility in Europe, has set a world record for diode-pumped petawatt lasers. According to LLNL, the milestone means that the system is ready for delivery and integration at the European Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility project (ELI Beamlines) in the Czech Republic.

ELI officials have described the “L3” beamline, which will feature the HAPLS system, will be the “workhorse” beamline at the new user facility, providing high-energy, ultrashort pulses of light with an unprecedented repetition rate that will enable scientists to carry out cutting-edge experiments far more rapidly.

LLNL specified that HAPLS’ 28 femtosecond laser pulses had delivered 16 Joules - equivalent to around 0.5 petawatts per pulse - at a rate of 3.3 Hz.

In a statement from the giant US facility, which also houses the National Ignition Facility (NIF), LLNL director Bill Goldstein said: “Twenty years ago, LLNL pioneered the first petawatt laser, the NOVA Petawatt, representing a quantum leap forward in peak power. Today, HAPLS leads a new generation of petawatt lasers, with capabilities not seen before.”

The latest technical achievement comes only three years after the HAPLS team announced at SPIE’s Photonics West event that it had signed a deal with Austria-based Femtolasers to develop HAPLS and build a petawatt-pulsed laser capable of a 10 Hz repetition rate. Femtolasers has subsequently become part of laser firm Spectra-Physics, itself now a subsidiary of MKS Instruments.

Shipment of HAPLS to Prague had initially been pencilled in for 2016, although after an issue with floor vibrations at the Czech site that schedule has been delayed slightly. However, officials said during this year's Photonics West event that the L3 beamline is expected to be up and running for initial user experiments in early 2018.

Critical to that performance are a set of hugely powerful laser diode arrays, which were fabricated by diode specialist Lasertel. LLNL and ELI Beamlines scientists and engineers have been working side by side on all parts of the laser system, officials from the two facilities said. HAPLS is now set for transfer to ELI Beamlines, where it will be integrated into the facility’s laser beam transport and control systems, then brought up to its full design specification, with pulses of more than a petawatt firing at 10 Hz.