ARCTURUS Laser System

Our ARCTURUS laser system provides several laser pulses with powers in the multi-100 Terawatt range. When temporally compressed to pulse durations down to 30 femtoseconds, and spatially focused to spot sizes of few tens of µm^2, these pulses are brighter than all the sunlight reaching the Earth surface if concentrated similarly. Even in the rising intensity front of such pulses, the electric laser field amplitude exceeds Teravolts-per-metre and thus immediately tunnel ionizes matter into plasma. The plasma electrons are ripped away from their parent ions and then are expelled by the further rising laser pulse intensity, giving rise to relativistic interaction dynamics.    

ARCTURUS laser: a versatile high-contrast, high-power multi-beam laser system, M. Cerchez et al., High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Volume 7, e37 (2019)