Related papers: Particle acceleration in sub-cycle optical cells
We measure the emission of energetic electrons from the interaction between ultrashort laser pulses and a solid density plasma in the relativistic regime. We detect an electron beam that only appears with few-cycle pulses (< 10 fs) and…
Propagation of few-cycle laser pulses in optical fiber is investigated beyond the unidirectional approximation. Considered medium parameters include dispersion, Kerr and Raman nonlinearities. High intensities of ~10^10 kW/cm^2 lead to…
We present a significantly different reflection process from an optically thin flat metallic or dielectric layer and propose a strikingly simple method to form approximately unipolar half-cycle optical pulses via reflection of a…
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…
Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that the periodic solid-state structures irradiated by intense ($\sim 10^{19}$ W/cm${}^2$) laser pulses can generate collimated electron bunches with energies up to 30 MeV (and…
Modern laser sources nowadays deliver ultrashort light pulses reaching few cycles in duration, high energies beyond the Joule level and peak powers exceeding several terawatt (TW). When such pulses propagate through optically-transparent…
Compton scattering of short and ultra short (sub-cycle) laser pulses off mildly relativistic electrons is considered within a QED framework. The temporal shape of the pulse is essential for the differential cross section as a function of…
We examine a regime in which a linearly-polarized laser pulse with relativistic intensity irradiates a sub-critical plasma for much longer than the characteristic electron response time. A steady-state channel is formed in the plasma in…
Ultrashort laser pulses that last only a few optical cycles have been transformative tools for studying and manipulating light--matter interactions. Few-cycle pulses are typically produced from high-peak-power lasers, either directly from a…
I derive a temporally propagated uni-directional optical pulse equation valid in the few cycle limit. Temporal propagation is advantageous because it naturally preserves causality, unlike the competing spatially propagated models. The exact…
Photon accelerators can spectrally broaden laser pulses with high efficiency in moving electron density gradients. When driven by a conventional laser pulse, the group velocity walk-off experienced by the accelerated photons and…
The propagation of intense laser pulses and the generation of high energy electrons from the underdense plasmas are investigated using two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. When the ratio of the laser power and a critical power of…
The generation of energetic electron bunches by the interaction of a short, ultra-intense ($I>10^{19} \textrm{W/cm}^2$) laser pulse with "grating" targets has been investigated in a regime of ultra-high pulse-to-prepulse contrast…
The sub-luminal phase velocity of electromagnetic waves in free space is generally unobtainable, being closely linked to forbidden faster than light group velocities. The requirement of effective sub-luminal phase-velocity in laser-driven…
We experimentally observe the action of multiple light pulses on the transverse motion of a continuous beam of fullerenes. The light potential is generated by non-resonant ultra-short laser pulses in perpendicular spatial overlap with the…
An effective theory of laser--plasma based particle acceleration is presented. Here we treated the plasma as a continuous medium with an index of refraction $n_{m}$ in which a single electron propagates. Because of the simplicity of this…
A laser-boosted relativistic solid-density paraboloidal foil is known to efficiently reflect and focus a counterpropagating laser pulse. Here we show that in the case of an ultrarelativistic counterpropagating pulse, a high-energy and…
Controlling femtosecond optical pulses with temporal precision better than one cycle of the carrier field has a profound impact on measuring and manipulating interactions between light and matter. We explore pulses that are carved from a…
An electron irradiated by a linearly polarized relativistic intensity laser pulse in a cylindrical plasma channel can gain significant energy from the pulse. The laser electric and magnetic fields drive electron oscillations in a plane…
Single-cycle optical pulses with a controlled electromagnetic waveform allow to steer the motion of low-energy electrons in atoms, molecules, nanostructures or condensed-matter on attosecond dimensions in time. However, high-energy…