Related papers: Remote electrical arc suppression by laser filamen…
The substantial angular divergence of electron beams produced by direct laser acceleration is often considered as an inherent negative feature of the mechanism. The divergence however arises primarily because the standard approach relies on…
The transport of relativistic electrons generated in the interaction of petawatt class lasers with solid targets has been studied through measurements of the optical emission from their rear surface. The high degree of polarization of the…
The femtosecond laser filamentation is the result of the dynamic interplay between plasma self-focusing and defocusing generated by the multiphoton/tunnel ionization of air molecules. This equilibrium allows the filament to stably propagate…
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…
The dynamics of electron injection in the direct laser acceleration (DLA) regime was investigated by means of three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and theoretical analysis. It is shown that when an ultra-intense laser pulse…
A method for the generation of ultrarelativistic electron beams with high spin polarization is put forward, where a tightly-focused linearly-polarized ultraintense laser pulse interacts with a nonprepolarized transverse-size-tailored solid…
Direct laser acceleration (DLA) offers a compact source of high-charge, energetic electrons for generating secondary radiation or neutrons. While DLA in high-density plasma optimizes the energy transfer from a laser pulse to electrons, it…
Relativistic laser pulses can accelerate electrons up to energies of several GeV during the interaction with gaseous targets through the direct laser acceleration (DLA) mechanism. While the electrons are accelerated to high energies, they…
Using a three-dimensional quasiclassical technique we explore molecular double ionization by a linearly polarized, infrared (800 nm) and ultrashort (6 fs) laser pulse. We first focus on intensities corresponding to the tunneling regime and…
It was recently demonstrated that laser filamentation was able to generate an optically transparent channel through cloud and fog for free-space optical communications applications. However, no quantitative measurement of the interaction…
Controlled interaction of laser light with electron beams is fundamental for ultrafast electron microscopy and electron-based quantum optics, yet their direct coupling is forbidden in free space. Here we use longitudinally polarized light…
Laser-plasma technology promises a drastic reduction of the size of high energy electron accelerators. It could make free electron lasers available to a broad scientific community, and push further the limits of electron accelerators for…
Interaction of an ultrastrong short laser pulse with non-prepolarized near-critical density plasma is investigated in an ultrarelativistic regime, with an emphasis on the radiative spin polarization of ejected electrons. Our…
We briefly report on the recently proposed [G. Fiore, R. Fedele, U. de Angelis, Phys. Plasmas 21 (2014), 113105], [G. Fiore, S. De Nicola, arXiv:1509.04656] electron acceleration mechanism named "slingshot effect": under suitable conditions…
Strong deformation of ultrashort laser pulse shapes is unavoidable when delivering high intensities at remote distances due to non-linear effects taking place while propagating. Relying on the reversibility of laser filamentation, we…
Observations of flare-heated electrons in the corona typically suggest confinement of electrons. The confinement mechanism, however, remains unclear. The transport of coronal hot electrons into ambient plasma was recently investigated by…
Oblique incidence of a $p$-polarized laser beam on a fully ionized plasma with a low density plasma corona is investigated numerically by Particle-In-Cell and Vlasov simulations in two dimensions. A single narrow self-focused current jet of…
We investigate experimentally the plasma dynamics of a centimeter-scale, laser filamentation-guided spark discharge. Using electrical and optical diagnostics to study monopolar discharges with varying current pulses we show that plasma…
In laser-solid interactions, electrons may be generated and subsequently accelerated to energies of the order-of-magnitude of the ponderomotive limit, with the underlying process dominated by direct laser acceleration. Breaking this limit,…
The dynamics of electrons in counter-propagating, circularly polarized laser beams are shown to exhibit attractors whose ability to trap particles depends on the ratio of the beam intensities and a single parameter describing radiation…