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Combining high-energy pulses with short, high-intensity pulses for maximum experimental flexibility.

With three operating laser platforms—Janus, Titan, and COMET—the uniqueness of the Jupiter Laser Facility (JLF) lies in its ability to create flexible laser, target, and diagnostic configurations. This gives facility users hands-on access and control over their experimental operations, no matter which laser they are working on.

Laser pulses

The facility’s main laser bay consists of three different beams—two long pulses and one short pulse. In this setup, one long pulse is dedicated to Janus, the short pulse to Titan, and the other long pulse can be shared between both laser platforms. The compact multipulse terawatt or “COMET” laser, on the other hand, is a standalone laser system with its own target area. View the facility’s layout (PDF).

Titan and COMET use a technique called chirped pulse amplification (CPA) for producing high-intensity, short laser pulses to investigate various processes, such as generating particles from secondary sources and powerful magnetic fields. Rather than amplifying a short pulse directly, CPA first stretches the pulse in time to reduce its intensity, then amplifies it, and finally recompresses the pulse to its original duration. This technique allows short-pulse lasers like Titan and COMET to provide high peak power while preserving the optical components of the laser system.

When used in conjunction, long and short pulses create what is known as a “pump‒probe experiment.” The long pulse is the pump, used to disrupt a sample’s equilibrium and generate a specific environment, and the short pulse probes the sample to capture the phenomena taking place.

Laser platforms


Janus

 

Titan

 

COMET

 

Janus

: Outside the Janus target chamber.

Janus is one of the world’s few hands-on lasers that can produce kilojoules of energy. Janus has two independent long-pulse beams that can fire approximately every 30 minutes, with pulse lengths ranging from 1 to 20 nanoseconds. With Janus, users can make last-minute adjustments to a sample’s position, beam energy, and beam orientation to see how these changes may affect an experiment. The system also offers frequency doubling, meaning a wavelength can be divided by two, allowing researchers to study different effects, e.g., how the wavelength of a laser beam affects how the laser’s energy propagates though matter. Additionally, Janus can distribute energy to a sample using a variety of pulse shapes—delivering energy in a consistent manner, incrementally ramping up the energy, etc.

Janus’ flexibility not only encourages new science, platform development, and diagnostic testing but also makes it possible for users to perfect their experiments prior to fielding experiments on other laser facilities like Livermore’s National Ignition Facility (NIF). Facilities like NIF can produce more extreme conditions but generally allot less time for experiments.

Titan

Titan’s target chamber.

Titan is one of the few high-intensity lasers in the world combining high energy (>100 joules), sub-picosecond pulse lengths, and flexibility in setting up beams and target configurations. While Titan and Janus use the same laser source and can fire the same number of shots per day, Titan’s short pulses are 1,000 times shorter, making its ability to produce more than 100 joules in such a short time span an extremely unique feature in the laser world.

The Titan system has one long-pulse and one short-pulse beam that can be used together or independently. The first is composed of a nanosecond, kilojoule long-pulse beam, and the second is a short-pulse beam with 1 to 10 picosecond pulses and energies up to 300 joules—depending on pulse duration. Its combination of long- and short-pulse beams is ideal for accelerating particles and developing high-energy photons for nuclear studies and investigating high-energy-density matter with these sources.

COMET

The COMET laser system.

The compact multipulse terawatt (COMET) laser’s flexible configuration, which was designed primarily to generate laboratory x rays, offers uncompressed (long) pulses from 500 picoseconds to 0.75 nanoseconds, compressed (short) pulses down to 0.5 picoseconds, and beam energies up to 10 joules. While COMET’s energy outputs are about 10–15 times lower than Titan’s short pulse, COMET has a higher repetition rate of 15 shots per hour, making it an ideal system for diagnostic development.

Meet JLF users

Dustin Froula
Farhat Beg
Elizabeth Grace

For more details about each laser’s operational specifications or machine status:

Contact us

Inspiring the next generation of researchers

 JLF played an essential role in my career growth. I did my postdoc work at JLF which led to 3 papers in Physical Review Letters. The hands-on experience and access to the state-of-the-art lasers provided by JLF have been benefiting students and early-career scientists for generations.