Related papers: High-Efficiency Plasma-Based Compressor for Ultraf…
Raman amplification in plasma has been promoted as a means of compressing picosecond optical laser pulses to femtosecond duration to explore the intensity frontier. Here we show for the first time that it can be used, with equal success, to…
In the effort of achieving high-energetic ion beams from the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with a plasma, volumetric acceleration mechanisms beyond Target Normal Sheath Acceleration have gained attention. A relativisticly intense…
The radiation pressure acceleration regime of laser ion acceleration requires high intensity laser pulses to function efficiently. Moreover the foil should be opaque for incident radiation during the interaction to ensure maximum momentum…
Experiments were performed to study electron acceleration by intense sub-picosecond laser pulses propagating in sub-mm long plasmas of near critical electron density (NCD). Low density foam layers of 300-500 um thickness were used as…
We present an in-depth experimental-computational study of the parameters necessary to optimize a tunable, quasi-monoenergetic, efficient, low-background Compton backscattering (CBS) x-ray source that is based on the self-aligned…
Pulsed plasmas in liquids exhibit complex interaction between three phases of matter (liquids, gas, plasmas) and are currently used in a wide range of applications across several fields, however significant knowledge gaps in our…
Electron beam quality is paramount for X-ray pulse production in free-electron-lasers (FELs). State-of-the-art linear accelerators (linacs) can deliver multi-GeV electron beams with sufficient quality for hard X-ray-FELs, albeit requiring…
We present nonlinear pulse compression of a high-power SESAM-modelocked thin-disk laser (TDL) using an Ar-filled hypocycloid-core Kagome Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber (HC-PCF). The output of the modelocked Yb:YAG TDL with 127 W average…
A new amplification method, weaving the three basic compression techniques, Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification (OPCPA) and Plasma Compression by Backward Raman Amplification (BRA) in plasma, is…
We perform a post-compression of high energy pulses by using optical-field ionization of low pressure helium gas in a guided geometry. We apply this approach to a TW chirped-pulse-amplification based Ti:Sapphire laser chain and show that…
We have developed low-dispersion (1480 l/mm), resonance-free, diffraction gratings made of dielectric materials resistant to femtosecond laser damage $(SiO_{2}/HfO_{2})$. A 14 cm diameter sample was fabricated resulting in a mean…
Applications of terawatt-class lasers can enormously benefit from pulse trains with kHz repetition rates. The associated unprecedented combinations of peak and average powers require the development of new concepts for scalable ultrashort…
The short wavelength and high peak power of the present generation of free-electron lasers (FELs) opens the possibility of ultra-short pulses even surpassing the present (tens to hundreds of attoseconds) capabilities of other light sources…
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…
We are proposing a facility based on high gradient acceleration via x-band RF structures and plasma acceleration. We plan to reach an electron energy of the order of 1 GeV, suitable to drive a Free Electron Laser for applications in the so…
Ultra-high field intensities are essential for developing high-energy-density physics and compact plasma accelerators, but they are essentially constrained by the limitations of focusing distance and nonlinear efficiency. We present a…
A method to achieve High-Brightness Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (HB-SASE) in the Free Electron Laser (FEL) is described. The method uses repeated non-equal electron beam delays to de-localise the collective FEL interaction and break…
Modern x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) produce x-ray pulses of exceptional transverse coherence. This is due largely to the process of optical guiding by which the radiation is both refractively guided by the bunched electron beam and…
The increasing popularity of time-resolved X-ray absorption measurements for understanding dynamics in molecular and material systems has led to many advances in table-top sources for pulsed X-rays. We report on a table top laser-produced…
Plasma accelerators can generate ultra high brightness electron beams which open the door to light sources with smaller physical footprint and properties un-achievable with conventional accelerator technology. In this paper we show that…