Overview

• The RAVEN (Real-time Acquisition of Vectorial Electromagnetic Near-fields) method captures the full shape, timing and polarization of individual ultra-intense laser pulses in a single measurement.
• The diagnostic system splits the beam, uses spectral dispersion and a birefringent material before recording wavefront geometry with a microlens array, enabling rapid reconstruction of the pulse’s vector field.
• When deployed on Germany’s ATLAS-3000 petawatt laser, RAVEN revealed subtle spatio-temporal distortions on-the-fly that were previously undetectable.
• Instant feedback from RAVEN allows operators to fine-tune laser alignment and focus within a single shot, cutting diagnostic time and boosting experimental precision.
• Researchers plan to apply RAVEN to refine inertial fusion energy experiments and probe high-field quantum electrodynamics phenomena such as photon-photon scattering.