Active control of filamentation compression of CPA laser pulses

Increasing the intensity of the pulses generated at a CPA laser facility is beneficial for most experiments. FIlamentation compression offers a practical way to do so that benefits from a higher allowable energy capacity and simpler implementation than the hollow-core fiber compression scheme. Here, input laser pulses of different bandwidth and duration are spectrally broadened and compressed via filamentation. A genetic algorithm is employed during the execution of these experiments with the use of a deformable mirror and Dazzler acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter along with myriad arbitrary feedback parameters and figures of merit. This optimization routine allows control of many of the experiment's outputs including pulse duration and the usability of the output beam via the spatial profile.