Boron nitride plasma micro lens for high intensity laser pre-pulse suppression.

We demonstrate that amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and pre-pulses for high power lasers can be suppressed by propagating the pulse through a boron nitride plasma microlens. The microlens is created by ablating a boron-nitride (BN) disk with a central hole using an Nd:YAG laser . The plasma lens produced in the ablation process exhibits different focal lengths for the high intensity main pulse and low intensity pre-pulse that increases the main pulse/pre-pulse contrast ratio by one order of magnitude while maintaining high transmittance of the pulse energy.