Demonstration of stable, long-term operation of a kW-class nanosecond pulsed DPSSL operating at 10 J, 100 Hz

We report on the successful commissioning of DiPOLE-100Hz, a DPSSL amplifying nanosecond pulses to 10 J energy at 100 Hz repetition rate. As part of initial commissioning experiments, the system was configured to amplify 15 ns pulses at 100 Hz pulse rate to an energy of 7 J. The system was operated at this level for four hours (corresponding to 1.44·10⁶ shots) with an energy stability of 1% rms. Subsequently, the laser demonstrated amplification of 15 ns pulses to the full specification of 10 J, 100 Hz, corresponding to 1 kW average power, with an optical-to-optical efficiency of 25.4% and long-term energy stability of less than 1% rms measured over one hour. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time long-term, reliable operation of a kW-class high energy nanosecond pulsed DPSSL at 100 Hz has been demonstrated.