Plasma lenses for ultrashort multi-petawatt laser pulses
Abstract
An ideal plasma lens can provide the focusing power of a small f-number, solid-state focusing optic at a fraction of the diameter. An ideal plasma lens, however, relies on a steady-state, linear laser pulse-plasma interaction. Ultrashort multi-petawatt (MPW) pulses possess broad bandwidths and extreme intensities, and, as a result, their interaction with the plasma lens is neither steady state nor linear. Here we examine nonlinear and time-dependent modifications to plasma lens focusing, and show that these result in chromatic and phase aberrations and amplitude distortion. We find that a plasma lens can provide enhanced focusing for 30 fs pulses with peak power up to ~1 PW. The performance degrades through the MPW regime, until finally a focusing penalty is incurred at ~10 PW.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1510.01766,
title = {Plasma lenses for ultrashort multi-petawatt laser pulses},
author = {J. P. Palastro and D. Gordon and B. Hafizi and L. A. Johnson and J. Penano and R. F. Hubbard and M. Helle and D. Kaganovich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.01766},
year = {2016}
}