HORUS pushes attosecond physics
Physicists from MPQ and LMU develop new laser system.
Laser physicists from the attoworld team at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München (LMU) have developed a new and unique high-power laser system for driving the attosecond beamlines and ultrafast attosecond experiments at MPQ.
The new laser “HORUS” (High-power OPCPA system for high Repetition rate Ultrafast Spectroscopy) operates in the near-infrared spectral range at 2µm wavelength and provides up to 50W of average output power at a 10kHz repetition rate. In combination with few-cycle pulse durations at 20 fs and CEP stability, this laser currently is one of the most powerful light sources of its kind. To reach these unique parameters scientists have implemented a three-stage optical-parametric chirped pulse amplifier (OPCPA) which is driven by a high-power picosecond thin-disk laser system.
HORUS will now be connected to our attosecond beamline infrastructure and eventually replace the titanium sapphire (Ti:Sa) laser technology to allow for experiments with higher photon energies in the extreme UV and higher repetition rates as well.