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We report on the fabrication of micro-axicons made of glass by laser-assisted wet etching (LAE) and laser polishing. The employed technique, relying on an efficient direct-writing process by femtosecond laser, allows revealing high fidelity…
An axiparabola is a reflective aspherical optics that focuses a light beam into an extended focal line. The light intensity and group velocity profiles along the focus are adjustable through the proper design. The on-axis light velocity can…
Plasma high harmonics generation from an extremely intense short-pulse laser is explored by including the effects of ion motion, electron-ion collisions and radiation reaction force in the plasma dynamics. The laser radiation pressure…
Ion acceleration from gaseous targets driven by relativistic-intensity lasers was demonstrated as early as the late 90s, yet most of the experiments conducted to date have involved picosecond-duration, Nd:glass lasers operating at low…
We introduce a first full analytical bubble and blow-out model for a radially inhomogeneous plasma in a quasi-static approximation. For both cases we calculate the accelerating and the focusing fields. In our model we also assume a thin…
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) can produce relativistic electron beams and various secondary particles in centimeter-long plasmas, making it a valuable particle source with important applications in many disciplines. In this work, we…
We investigate the different facets of ion acceleration by a relativistically intense circularly polarized laser pulse interacting with thin near-critical density plasma targets. Our simulations establish that plasma density gradient and…
The study of laser wakefield electron acceleration (LWFA) using mid-IR laser drivers is a promising path for future laser driven electronaccelerators, when compared to traditional near-IR laser drivers uperating at 0.8-1 {\mu}m central…
For sufficiently short relativistic-intensity laser pulses, the disparity in time scales for electron and ion motion causes ions to behave as a fixed, neutralizing background. As the pulse duration or intensity is increased, ion motion…
We photoionize laser-cooled atoms with a laser beam possessing spatially periodic intensity modulations to create ultracold neutral plasmas with controlled density perturbations. Laser-induced fluorescence imaging reveals that the density…
Laser accelerated protons can be a complimentary source for treatment of oncological diseases to the existing hadron therapy facilities. We demonstrate how the protons, accelerated from near-critical density plasmas by laser pulses having…
This paper describes a 561 nm laser heterodyne interferometer that provides time-resolved measurements of line-integrated plasma electron density within the range of 10^15-10^18 cm^(-2). Such plasmas are produced by railguns on the Plasma…
A high repetition rate electron source was generated by tightly focusing kHz, few-mJ laser pulses into an underdense plasma. This high intensity laser-plasma interaction led to stable electron beams over several hours but with strikingly…
We determine conditions allowing to simplify the description of the impact of a short and arbitrarily intense laser pulse onto a cold plasma at rest. If both the initial plasma density and pulse profile have plane simmetry, then suitable…
By means of a quantitative shadowgraphic method, we performed a space-time characterization of the refractive index variation and transient absorption induced by a light-plasma filament generated by a 100 fs laser pulse in water. The…
Incoherent photon emission by ultrarelativistic electrons in the normal incidence of a laser pulse on a foil is investigated by means of three-dimensional numerical simulations in the range of intensities $2 \times 10^{21} \text{--} 2…
This work provides a brief review of the numerical methods for modelling the optical propagation of an ultrashort, intense laser pulse in plasmas and ionizable gases. These methods are implemented in an open-source simulation toolkit…
The extraordinary ability of space-charge waves in plasmas to accelerate charged particles at gradients that are orders of magnitude greater than in current accelerators has been well documented. We develop a phenomenological framework for…
The interaction of ultra-intense laser pulses with an underdense plasma is used in laser-plasma acceleration to create compact sources of ultrashort pulses of relativistic electrons and X-rays. The accelerating structure is a plasma wave,…
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…