Vulcan laser

Vulcan Laser

Vulcan is a versatile high power laser system that is composed of Nd:glass amplifier chain capable of delivering up to 2.6kJ of laser energy in long pulses (nanosecond duration) and up to 1 PW (10¹⁵ W) peak power in a short pulse (500 fs duration) at 1054nm.

It currently has 8 beam lines.Two of these beam lines can operate either short pulse mode or long pulse mode, the remaining 6 operate on a long pulse mode.The short-pulse and long-pulse systems operating jointly can be directed to 3 different target areas enabling sophisticated interaction and probing experiments.

In its short pulse mode, Vulcan is capable of delivering ultra-high focussed intensities greater than 10²¹ Wcm^-2 .To achieve these ultra-high intensities a sub-picosecond pulse is amplified to hundreds of Joules and then focused near to its diffraction limit.

This amplification is achieved by using the technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA). In this mode, a low intensity pulse is stretched in time from a few hundred femtoseconds to nanoseconds. This pulse is then amplified before being recompressed and focused onto the target producing intensities of 10²¹Wcm^-2.