Related papers: Efficient Raman amplification into the PetaWatt re…
Light amplification towards extremely high power in the infrared regime remains a significant challenge due to the lack of suitable gain media. Here we propose a new scheme to amplify a laser pulse with tunable wavelengths towards extremely…
Raman amplification in plasma has been promoted as a means of compressing picosecond optical laser pulses to femtosecond duration to explore the intensity frontier. Here we show for the first time that it can be used, with equal success, to…
Two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations characterizing the interaction of ultraintense short pulse lasers in the range 10^{18} \leq I \leq 10^{20} W/cm^{2} with converging target geometries are presented. Seeking to examine intensity…
Ultra-short high-power lasers can deliver extreme light intensities ($\ge 10^{20}$ W/cm$^2$ and $\leq 30 f$s) and drive large amplitude Surface Plasma Wave (SPW) at over-dense plasma surface. The resulting current of energetic electron has…
The wealth of work in backward Raman amplification in plasma has focused on the extreme intensity limit, however backward Raman amplification may also provide an effective and practical mechanism for generating intense, broad bandwidth,…
Particle acceleration using ultraintense, ultrashort laser pulses is one of the most attractive topics in relativistic laser-plasma research. We report proton/ion acceleration in the intensity range of 5x1019 W/cm2 to 3.3x1020 W/cm2 by…
In plasma-based backward Raman amplifiers, the output pulse intensity increases with the input pump pulse intensity, as long as the Langmuir wave mediating energy transfer from the pump to the seed pulse remains intact. However, at high…
It is shown here that Brillouin amplification can be used to produce picosecond pulses of petawatt power. Brillouin amplification is far more resilient to fluctuations in the laser and plasma parameters than Raman amplification, making it…
Raman and Brillouin amplification are two schemes for amplifying and compressing short laser pulses in plasma. Analytical models have already been derived for both schemes, but the full consequences of these models are little known or used.…
We investigate the propagation of a coherent probe light pulse through a three-level atomic medium (in the $\Lambda$--configuration) in the presence of a pump laser under the conditions for gain without inversion. When the carrier frequency…
We report on the depletion and power amplification of the driving laser pulse in a strongly-driven laser wakefield accelerator. Simultaneous measurement of the transmitted pulse energy and temporal shape indicate an increase in peak power…
Laser plasma acceleration at kilohertz repetition rate has recently been shown to work in two different regimes, with pulse lengths of either 30 fs or 3.5 fs. We now report on a systematic study in which a large range of pulse durations and…
Spatially-structured light with tunable intensity, wavelength, and spatiotemporal profiles has demonstrated significant potentials for fundamental and applied science, including the ultrafast and high-field physics. Nevertheless, the…
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…
We present an experimental demonstration of high conversion efficiency Betatron x-ray radiation from petawatt laser irradiated near critical plasmas. Direct laser acceleration serves as the dominant regime when laser pulse of ~5e20 W/cm2…
Backward Raman amplification of laser pulses in plasmas can produce nearly relativistic unfocused output intensities and multi-exawatt powers in compact devices. The largest achievable intensity depends on which of major competitive…
We have investigated numerically the coupling between a 10 \si{MeV} electron bunch of high charge (\SI{> 100}{pc}) with a laser generated accelerating plasma wave. Our results show that a high efficiency coupling can be achieved using a…
We describe a fiber Raman amplifier for nanosecond and sub-nanosecond pulses centered around 1260 nm. The amplification takes place inside a 4.5-m-long polarization-maintaining phosphorus-doped fiber, pumped at 1080 nm by 3-ns-long pulses…
An ultra-short (about 30 fs) petawatt laser pulse focused with a wide focal spot (about 100 microns) in a rarefied plasma (electron density of order 10^{17} per cm^3) excites a nonlinear plasma wakefield which can accelerate injected…
The measurement of peak laser intensities exceeding $10^{20} \text{W/cm$^2$}$ is in general a very challenging task. We suggest a simple method to accurately measure such high intensities up to about $10^{23} \text{W/cm$^2$}$, by colliding…