Abstract
We demonstrate that amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and pre-pulses for high power lasers can be suppressed by propagating the pulse through a boron nitride plasma microlens. The microlens is created by ablating a boron-nitride (BN) disk with a central hole using an Nd:YAG laser. The plasma lens produced in the ablation process exhibits different focal lengths for the high intensity main pulse and low intensity pre-pulse that increases the main pulse/pre-pulse contrast ratio by one order of magnitude while maintaining high transmittance of the pulse energy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 5077-5085 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Optics Express |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 25 Feb 2013 |