Related papers: Ponderomotive-expulsion: toward creating an electr…
We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and simple analytic models to investigate the laser-plasma interaction known as ponderomotive steepening. When normally incident laser light reflects at the critical surface of a plasma, the…
A new electron injection scheme is proposed in sub-relativistic plasma wakefield accelerators. A transverse laser ionizes a dopant gas and ponderomotively accelerates the released electrons in the direction of wake propagation. This process…
It is known that the ponderomotive potential from the laser electron interaction behaves like a static potential that scatters off electrons. We have investigated the process of the electron tunneling the ponderomotive potential by using…
The well-known ponderomotive force, arising from the interaction of matter and light, has critical implications across a broad range of fields from laser fusion and astrophysics to laser diagnostics and even pulsed-power experiments. This…
We show that under appropriate conditions the impact of a very short and intense laser pulse onto a plasma causes the expulsion of surface electrons with high energy in the direction opposite to the one of propagation of the pulse. This is…
We report on the experimental studies of laser driven ion acceleration from double-layer target where a near-critical density target with a few-micron thickness is coated in front of a nanometer thin diamond-like carbon foil. A significant…
We present a novel technique to assess the focal volume of petawatt-class lasers at full power. Our approach exploits quantitative measurement of the angular distribution of electrons born in the focus via ionization of rarefied gas, which…
A formalism for describing relativistic ponderomotive effects, which occur in the dynamics of an electron driven by a focused relativisticaly intense optical envelope, is established on the basis of a rigorous asymptotic expansion of the…
Several methods have been proposed in the literature to improve Free Electron Laser output by transforming the electron phase-space before entering the FEL interaction region. By utilising `beam by design' with novel undulators and other…
We review recent PIC simulation results which show that double-sided irradiation of a thin over-dense plasma slab with ultra-intense laser pulses from both sides can lead to sustained comoving Poynting flux acceleration of electrons to…
We present a detailed quantitative description of the recently proposed "slingshot effect" [Fiore, Fedele, De angelis 2014]. Namely, we determine a broad range of conditions under which the impact of a very short and intense laser pulse…
We study a method for mass-selective removal of ions from a Paul trap by parametric excitation. This can be achieved by applying an oscillating electric quadrupole field at twice the secular frequency $\omega_{\text{sec}}$ using pairs of…
In the optical pumping systems based on the pump-probe arrangement, the spin polarization of the atoms is generally monitored utilizing the probe laser beam, in which way an extra perturbation must be introduced and thus affects the normal…
We present a new analytical solution for the equation of motion of relativistic electrons in the focus of a high-intensity laser pulse. We approximate the electron's transverse dynamics in the averaged field of a long laser pulse focused to…
We study the laser-driven acceleration of electrons from overdense hydrogen clusters to energies of up to 13 MeV in laser forward direction and several hundreds of keV in an outer ring-like structure. The use of cryogenic hydrogen allows…
Spatial distributions of electrons ionized and scattered from ultra-low pressure gases are proposed and experimentally demonstrated as a method to directly measure the intensity of an ultra-high intensity laser pulse. Analytic models…
Vacuum birefringence is one of the most striking predictions of strong field quantum electrodynamics: Probe photons traversing a strong field region can indirectly sense the applied "pump" electromagnetic field via quantum fluctuations of…
Nonlinear properties of Surface Plasmon Polaritons stemming from the inherent electron plasma nonlinearity of the metal layers are investigated. A fluid-mechanics plasma model is used to describe the electron motion in metals. The nonlinear…
We propose an experiment to extract ponderomotive squeezing from an interferometer with high circulating power and low mass mirrors. In this interferometer, optical resonances of the arm cavities are detuned from the laser frequency,…
The physics governing electron acceleration by a relativistically intense laser are not confined to the critical density surface, they also pervade the sub-critical plasma in front of the target. Here, particles can gain many times the…