Nonlinear compression of a burst-mode 100 W Nd-doped picosecond amplifier in a multi-pass cell device

The pulse duration of a burst-mode 100 W Nd-doped picosecond amplifier is nonlinearly compressed in a multi-pass cell device. The spectral broadening and pulse compression are investigated theoretically and experimentally. The spectral bandwidth is broadened from 0.13 nm to 3.28 nm experimentally, corresponding to a broadening factor of 25.2. The pulse duration is compressed from 14.2 ps to 0.99 ps, corresponding to a compression factor of 14.3. The compressed pulse duration of four successive pulses are theoretically estimated to be 0.98 ps, 1.47 ps, 1.86 ps, and 3.07 ps, respectively. The laser power after the compressor is 72 W. Therefore, the total efficiency of our system reaches 72%. The beam quality after the MPC unit is almost preserved with a M2 value of 1.38×1.40. This laser source has great potential to be applied in microfabrication field.