Reduced Parasitic Lasing in Ti:Sapphire Lasers: Removing a Bottleneck to New Ways of Acceleration

New, ultrafast, ultra-intense solid state lasers can be efficient sources of accelerated particle beams in applications ranging from high energy physics research to real world medical applications. However, parasitic lasing represents a severe bottleneck to scaling-up this new technology. Removing this bottleneck would efficiently bring accelerator technology to a wide range of real world problems. In this project, parasitic lasing will be reduced by a series of growth and post-growth treatments, in order to allow the production of large Ti:sapphire crystals without parasitic lasing. The crystals will be treated with varying oxidation states, as well as with other reactions on the surface, to provide a homogenous crystal with reduced parasitic lasing. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: In addition to the application for High Energy Physics, the technology could be used in proton therapy for the treatment of cancer with compact efficient sources of high energy protons.