The 200 m2 HERACLES laboratory houses our state of the art laser system devoted to the generation of high harmonics. The laser system is approaching completion and will provide energy up to 2 mJ at 25 kHz with pulse duration as short as 8 fs resulting in peak power as high as 0.25 TW. Equipment of the latest technology for the production, measurement and amplification of ultrashort pulses is available in our laboratory, including:
- A carrier envelope phase stabilized Ti:Sapphire oscillator providing octave spanning spectra. The oscillator benefits from the recent advances in double chirped mirrors technology. Our carrier envelope stabilization module is extremely compact and reliable since it does not require any spectral broadening element
- A homemade Spectral Phase Interferometry for Direct Electric-field Reconstruction apparatus (SPIDER - 2DSI design [Birge et al.]) allowing measurement of the spectral phase of pulses with octave spanning spectra. The shortest pulse measured with such apparatus was as short as 4.7 fs
- A homemade compact (30 cm x 30 cm) autocorrelator designed to measure few cycle pulses. Pulses as short as 4.7 fs have also been measured with our autocorrelator
- An Acousto-Optic Programmable Dispersive Filter (AOPDF - Dazzler, Fastlite) designed to handle spectra as wide as 600 nm permitting extremely fine tuning of the spectral phase of few cycle pulses
- A 5 cm diameter deformable mirror (OKO) able to handle pulses with spectra wider than 300 nm. Such device ensures optimal focusing of amplified few cycle pulses to reach the highest peak intensity
- A 25 m test range for propagation or remote sensing experiments