Related papers: Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers
Light modulation is an essential operation in photonics and optoelectronics. With existing and emerging technologies increasingly demanding compact, efficient, fast and broadband optical modulators, high-performance light modulation…
We demonstrate a simple method to obtain accurate optical waveforms with a GHz-level programmable modulation bandwidth and Watt-level output power for wideband optical control of free atoms and molecules. Arbitrary amplitude and phase…
Plasma is an attractive medium for generating strong microscopic magnetic structures and tunable electromagnetic radiation with predictable topologies due to its extraordinary ability to sustain and manipulate high currents and strong…
Laser-driven plasma accelerators provide acceleration gradients three orders of magnitude greater than conventional machines, offering the potential to shrink the length of accelerators by the same factor. To date, laser-acceleration of…
We present a novel approach to precisely synthesize arbitrary polarization states of light with a high modulation bandwidth. Our approach consists of superimposing two laser light fields with the same wavelength, but with opposite circular…
Modulating the amplitude and phase of light is at the heart of many applications such as wavefront shaping, transformation optics, phased arrays, modulators and sensors. Performing this task with high efficiency and small footprint is a…
Efficient coupling of intense laser pulses to solid-density matter is critical to many applications including ion acceleration for cancer therapy. At relativistic intensities, the focus has been mainly on investigating various laser beams…
Spatial light modulators enable arbitrary control of the intensity of optical light fields and facilitate a variety of applications in biology, astronomy and atomic, molecular and optical physics. For coherent light fields, holography,…
Tunable lasers are essential for optical communication, spectroscopy, and precision sensing, where flexible and fast control of the laser wavelength is needed. However, conventional tunable laser systems often rely on mechanical actuation,…
Laser-plasma accelerators offer a compact means of producing high-energy electron beams, but their performance is fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated electrons and the plasma wave. To overcome this limitation, we…
Electro-optical modulators are essential components in optical communication systems. They encode an electrical waveform onto an optical carrier. However, their performance is often limited by inherent electro-optic processes and…
We demonstrate a free-space amplitude modulator for mid-infrared radiation (lambda=9.6 um) that operates at room temperature up to at least 20 GHz (above the -3dB cutoff frequency measured at 8.2 GHz). The device relies on the ultra-fast…
We propose a novel scheme for controlling the injection of a high-quality electron bunch into a channel-guided laser plasma accelerator. This all-optical technique, constricted waveguide injection, creates a highly tunable controlled…
In this article, we concentrate on the basic physics of relativistic plasma wave accelerators. The generation of relativistic plasma waves by intense lasers or electron beams in low-density plasmas is important in the quest for producing…
The appeal of lasers can be attributed to both their ubiquitous applications and their role as model systems for elucidating nonequilibrium and cooperative phenomena. Introducing novel concepts in lasers thus has a potential for both…
In display technologies or data processing, planar and subwavelength free-space components suited for flat photonic devices are needed. Metasurfaces, which shape the optical wavefront within hundreds of nanometers, can provide a solution…
The advent of ultrahigh-power femtosecond lasers creates a need for optical components suitable to handle ultrahigh light intensities. Due to the unavoidable laser-induced ionization of matter, these components will have to be based on a…
We demonstrate efficient diffraction of intense ultrashort laser pulses using optical-field-ionization-induced plasma-neutral gratings formed by spatially structured ionization of a neutral molecular gas in the interference field of two…
The controlled modulation of an optical wavefront is required for aberration correction, digital phase conjugation or patterned photostimulation. For most of these applications it is desirable to control the wavefront modulation at the…
Plasmas may be used as gain media for amplifying intense lasers, and external magnetic fields may be applied to improve the performance. For mid-infrared lasers, the requisite magnetic field is on megagauss scale, which can already be…