Related papers: Brilliant attosecond {\gamma}-ray emission and hig…
Metal photocathodes are an important source of high-brightness electron beams, ubiquitous in the operation of both large-scale accelerators and table-top microscopes. When the surface of a metal is nano-engineered with patterns on the order…
High energy photons can decay to electron-positron pairs via the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process when colliding with an intense laser pulse. The energy spectrum of the produced particles is broadened because of the variation of their…
We investigate a single-laser scheme for reaching the strong-field QED regime based on direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons followed by their head-on collision with the same laser pulse reflected from an overdense foil. In this…
The field of attosecond science was first enabled by nonlinear compression of intense laser pulses to a duration below two optical cycles. Twenty years later, creating such short pulses still requires state-of-the-art few-cycle laser…
Laser wakefield acceleration can generate a femtosecond-scale broadband X-ray betatron radiation pulse from electrons accelerated by an intense laser pulse in a plasma. The micrometer-scale of the source makes wakefield betatron radiation…
The transformation of electromagnetic energy into matter represents a fascinating prediction of relativistic quantum electrodynamics that is paradigmatically exemplified by the creation of electron-positron pairs out of light. However, this…
We present a novel approach for generating collider-quality electron bunches using a plasma photoinjector. The approach leverages recently developed techniques for the spatiotemporal control of laser pulses to produce a moving ionization…
Using three-dimensional kinetic simulations, we examine the emission of collimated gamma-ray beams from structured laser-irradiated targets with a pre-filled cylindrical channel. The channel guides the incident laser pulse, enabling…
A novel intense beam-driven scheme for high yield of the tri-alpha reaction 11B(p,{\alpha})2{\alpha} was investigated. We used a foam target made of cellulose triacetate (TAC, C_9H_{16}O_8) doped with boron. It was then heated…
Short-pulse, ultra high-intensity lasers have opened new regimes for studying fusion plasmas and creating novel ultra-short ion beams and neutron sources. Diagnosing the plasma in these experiments is important for optimizing the fusion…
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…
We present a novel laser based ion acceleration scheme, where a petawatt circularly polarized laser pulse is shot on an ultra-thin (nano-scale) double-layer target. Our scheme allows the production of high-quality light ion beams with both…
The laser interaction with an electron-positron-ion mixed plasma is studied, from the perspective of the associated high-order harmonic generation. For an idealized mixed plasma which is assumed with a sharp plasma-vacuum interface and…
Prolific electron-positron pair production is possible at laser intensities approaching 10^{24} W/cm^2 at a wavelength of 1 micron. An analysis of electron trajectories and interactions at the nodes (B=0) of two counter-propagating,…
Positron acceleration in plasma wakefield faces significant challenges since the positron beam must be pre-generated and precisely coupled into the wakefield, and most critically, suffers from defocusing issues. Here we propose a scheme…
This dissertation explores the interaction between high-intensity lasers and plasmas to accelerate electrons and produce radiation via experimental and computational efforts. The laser pulses used in this dissertation have ultrashort…
We show using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and theoretical analysis that a high-quality electron beam whose density is modulated at angstrom scales can be generated directly using density downramp injection in a periodically modulated…
We experimentally demonstrate generation of strong narrow-bandwidth emissions with excellent coherent properties at ~391 nm and ~428 nm from molecular ions of nitrogen inside a femtosecond filament in air by an orthogonally polarized…
Utilizing laser plasma wakefield to accelerate ultra-high charge electron beam is critical for many pioneering applications, for example to efficiently produce nuclear isomers with short lifetimes which may be widely used. However, because…
The production of intense neutron beams via thermonuclear reactions in laser-generated plasmas is investigated theoretically. So far, state-of-the-art neutron beams are produced via laser-induced particle acceleration leading to high-energy…