Highly stable, 54mJ Yb-InnoSlab laser platform at 0.5kW average power.

We report on the leap of Yb-InnoSlab laser technology towards high pulse energies of 54mJ combined with high average power exceeding half a kW. The system features pulse durations of 1.5 picoseconds (ps) at 10kHz repetition rate with excellent beam properties (M2 of 1.1) combined with superb power and pointing stability in the sub-% range. It provides different output ports to facilitate optical synchronization for pumping parametric amplifiers. Tunable, femtosecond seed pulses are derived directly from the ps Yb pump pulses. We investigate the long term stability of this ps driven white light continuum and demonstrate 100-fold pulse compression down to 10fs duration. Ultra-broadband IR spectra centred at 2µm wavelength are subsequently generated via difference frequency generation of selected white light components.