UHI100 is the most intense laser at LIDYL. It delivers 25 fs pulses, with a peak power of 100 TW (2.5 J) at 10Hz and a high temporal contrast.
UH I 100 combines 5 stages of titanium – sapphire amplifiers. One original feature of UHI 100 lies in a preamplifier stage including a saturable absorber for temporal filtering that is placed upstream of the spectrum stretcher. As a result, the temporal contrast reaches 109 at the compressor output..
The UHI 100 laser alternately powers two radio-protected experimental rooms, fully equipped with :
- double plasma mirrors to achieve a temporal contrast of 1012 on the target,
- wavefront correction systems (deformable mirrors),
- experimental chambers,
- optical diagnostic tools and secondary sources (particles, photons).
The intensities reached on the target are in the 1019-1020 W /cm2 range.
UHI 100 is mostly used by the LIDYL/PHI team to study laser-matter interaction at ultra-high intensity. Research topics mainly concern the generation of fast particles and its applications and attosecond intense XUV beams.