Complete characterization of a plasma mirror for the production of high-contrast ultraintense laser pulses

A plasma mirror was theoretically and experimentally studied for the production of high-contrast ultraintense laser pulses. A Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti-sapphire oscillator was used for the generation of a pulse train of 40 nm spectral width. These pulses were temporally stretched to about 300 ps before being amplified in a Ti-sapphire regenerative amplifier, followed by two four-pass amplifiers. The results show that an improvement of the contrast ratio by more than two orders of magnitude can be achieved with a single plasma mirror, by using an antireflection coated plate as a target.