Related papers: On the upper limit of laser intensity attainable i…
Linear acceleration in free space is a topic that has been studied for over 20 years, and its ability to eventually produce high-quality, high energy multi-particle bunches has remained a subject of great interest. Arguments can certainly…
Inverse Compton scattering of an ultra-relativistic electron in the field of a high-intensity laser produces photon beams with angular and spectral distributions that are strongly dependent on the laser intensity. Here, we show that the…
The deflection of a laser beam traveling through a modulated electric field is measured using phase-sensitive detection to place an upper bound on photon charge. An upper limit of $10^{-14}e$ is obtained. The experiment involves a number of…
Observed intensities and inferred distances of soft gamma repeaters imply luminosities in excess of the nominal (electron-scattering opacity) Eddington limit by four to six orders of magnitude. I review the physical basis of this limit.…
The scientific community is currently witnessing an expensive and worldwide race to achieve the highest possible light intensity. Within the next decade this effort is expected to reach nearly $10^{24}\,\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{cm^2}$ in the lab…
The nonlinear absorption of laser radiation of relativistic intensities in the underdense plasma by a mechanism of stimulated bremsstrahlung of electrons on the ions/nuclei is investigated in the low frequency approximation. Coefficient of…
We study the direct acceleration of a free electron in infinite vacuum along the axis of a pulsed radially-polarized laser beam. We find that net energy transfer from laser pulse to electron is maximized with the tightest focusing. We show…
We demonstrate injection-locking of 120mW laser diodes operating at 397nm. We achieve stable operation with injection powers of ~100uW and a slave laser output power of up to 110mW. We investigate the spectral purity of the slave laser…
We investigate strong field vacuum effects using a phase space approach based on the Wigner formalism. We calculate the Wigner function in a strong null-field background exactly, using lightfront field theory. The Wigner function exhibits…
High-energy-density flows through dense matter are needed for effective progress in the production of laser-driven intense sources of energetic particles and radiation, in driving matter to extreme temperatures creating state regimes…
Calculations on the dynamics of ions and electrons in near-infrared laser fields at intensities up to $3 \times 10^{23}$ W/cm$^2$ are presented. We explore the acceleration of ions in a laser focus by conservation of canonical momentum…
We generate a tabletop pulsed relativistic electron beam at 100 Hz repetition rate from vacuum laser acceleration (VLA) by tightly focusing a radially polarized beam into a low-density gas. We demonstrate that strong longitudinal electric…
The relativistic quantum dynamics of an electron in an intense single-mode quantized electromagnetic field is investigated with special emphasis on the spin degree of freedom. In addition to fast spin oscillations at the laser frequency, a…
We report on the first results of laser plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultrashort mid-infrared laser pulses (\lambda= 3.9 \mu m, 100 fs, 0.25 TW), which enable near- and above-critical density interactions with moderate-density gas…
Laser wakefield accelerator experiments have made enormous progress over the past $\sim 20$ years, but their promise to revolutionize high-energy particle sources is only beginning to be realized. To make the next step toward engineering…
We demonstrate analytically and numerically that focusing of high harmonics produced by the reflection of a few femtosecond laser pulse from a concave plasma surface opens a new way towards unprecedentally high intensities. The key features…
It is conjectured that all perturbative approaches to quantum electrodynamics (QED) break down in the collision of a high-energy electron beam with an intense laser, when the laser fields are boosted to `supercritical' strengths far greater…
Lasing in the bad-cavity regime has promising applications in precision measurement and frequency metrology due to the reduced sensitivity of the laser frequency to cavity length fluctuations. Thus far, relevant studies have been mainly…
Recently much attention has being attracted to the problem of limitations on the attainable intensity of high power lasers [A.M. Fedotov {\it et al.} Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{105}, 080402 (2010)]. The laser energy can be absorbed by…
Up to date, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the most precisely tested quantum field theory. Nevertheless, particularly in the high-intensity regime it predicts various phenomena that so far have not directly been accessible in all-optical…