Related papers: Optimization and stabilization of a kilohertz lase…
A short overview of laser-plasma acceleration of ions is presented. The focus is on some recent experimental results and related theoretical work on advanced regimes. These latter include in particular target normal sheath acceleration…
There is renewed interest in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion, following the milestone December 2022 3.15 MJ ignition result on the National Ignition Facility. A key obstacle is the control of the two plasmon decay instability.…
The excitation of surface plasmons with ultra-intense ($I\sim 5\times 10^{19}$ W/cm$^2$), high contrast ($\sim 10^{12}$) laser pulses on periodically-modulated solid targets has been recently demonstrated to produce collimated bunches of…
A novel radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) regime of heavy ion beams from laser-irradiated ultrathin foils is proposed by self-consistently taking into account the ionization dynamics. In this regime, the laser intensity is required to…
We propose and detail a multi-step analytical procedure, based on an improved fully relativistic plane model for Laser Wake Field Acceleration, to tailor the initial density of a cold diluted plasma to the laser pulse profile, so as to…
Interaction of a high intensity short laser pulse with near-critical plasmas allows to achieve extremely high coupling efficiency and transfer laser energy to energetic ions. One dimensional Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations are considered…
We report on the depletion and power amplification of the driving laser pulse in a strongly-driven laser wakefield accelerator. Simultaneous measurement of the transmitted pulse energy and temporal shape indicate an increase in peak power…
A density perturbation produced in an underdense plasma was used to improve the quality of electron bunches produced in the laser-plasma wakefield acceleration scheme. Quasi-monoenergetic electrons were generated by controlled injection in…
We describe how active feedback routines can be applied at limited repetition rate (5 Hz) to optimize high-power $>10$ TW) laser interactions with clustered gases. Optimization of x-ray production from an argon cluster jet, using a genetic…
An electron injector concept for laser-plasma accelerator was developed in ref [1] and [2] ; it relies on the use of counter-propagating ultrashort laser pulses. In [2], the scheme is as follows: the pump laser pulse generates a large…
Plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) is a novel acceleration technique with promising prospects for both particle colliders and light sources. However, PWFA research has so far been limited to a few large-scale accelerator facilities…
A dual color, frequency and pulse duration agile laser system, capable of delivering laser pulses in arbitrary temporal profiles with ~1 ns to ~1 us pulse duration, chirping rates of ~27 MHz/ns with an achievable chirping range of several…
We present on THz generation in the two-color gas plasma scheme driven by a high-power, ultrafast fiber laser system. The applied scheme is a promising approach for scaling the THz average power but it has been limited so far by the driving…
ARES (Accelerator Research Experiment at SINBAD) is a linear accelerator at the SINBAD (Short INnovative Bunches and Accelerators at DESY) facility at DESY. ARES was designed to combine reproducible beams from conventional RF-based…
In this study we explore the optimization of laser pulse duration to obtain the shortest possible pulse. We do this by employing a feedback loop between a pulse shaper and pulse duration measurements. We apply to this problem several…
We study electron acceleration within a sub-critical plasma channel irradiated by an ultra-intense laser pulse ($a_0>100$ or $I>10^{22}~\mathrm{W/cm^2}$). In this regime, radiation reaction significantly alters the electron dynamics. This…
An experimental investigation on laser plasma acceleration of electrons has been carried out using 3 TW, 45 fs duration titanium sapphire laser pulse interaction with nitrogen gas jet at intensity of 2x10^18 W/cm^2. We have observed stable…
We demonstrate experimentally the resonant excitation of plasma waves by trains of laser pulses. We also take an important first step to achieving an energy recovery plasma accelerator by showing that unused wakefield energy can be removed…
The intrinsic constraints in the amplitude of the accelerating fields sustainable by radio-frequency accelerators demand for the pursuit of alternative and more compact acceleration schemes. Among these, plasma-based accelerators are…
We present the generation of THz radiation by focusing ultrafast laser pulses with three incommensurate wavelengths to form a plasma. The three colors include 800 nm and the variable IR signal and idler outputs from an optical parametric…