Current status of the PEnELOPE laser system

We present an update on the development of the PENELOPE laser system currently under construction at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Germany. Pulses from an oscillator are stretched to the nanosecond scale before several amplification stages will boost the energy up to the 150 J level on target. About 150 fs are foreseen at repetition rates of up to 1 Hz, ultimately yielding a peak power of 1 PW.
Our primary objective lies currently on the compression of the amplified pulses on the Joule scale. First tests used a direct compression of the stretched oscillator output (hence a small beam size), while the amplified compression will be performed with the full sized beam. Compressibility of the full scale beam is therefore of major interest. The second target is the improvement of the average power capacity of especially the second to the last amplifiers section. Room temperature operation is the main aim for the close future with lower temperature operation envisioned.