Related papers: Generation of high power spatially-structured lase…
Light amplification towards extremely high power in the infrared regime remains a significant challenge due to the lack of suitable gain media. Here we propose a new scheme to amplify a laser pulse with tunable wavelengths towards extremely…
Compression of an intense laser pulse using backward Raman amplification (BRA) in plasma, followed by vacuum focusing to a small spot size, can produce unprecedented ultrarelativistic laser intensities. The plasma density inhomogeneity…
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…
We propose to amplify and compress an ultrashort Light Spring laser seed with a long Gaussian-shaped laser pump through Raman amplification. This Light Spring, which has a helical spatio-temporal intensity profile, can be built on the…
For current state-of-the-art terawatt lasers, the primary laser scattering mechanisms in plasma include Forward Raman Scattering (FRS), excitation of plasma waves, and the self-modulational instability (SMI). Using 2D PIC simulations, we…
Raman amplification of a short laser pulse off a long laser beam has been demonstrated successfully for moderate probe intensities ($\sim 10^{16}$ W/cm$^2$) and widths ($\sim 50$ micron). However, truly competitive intensities can only be…
Direct laser acceleration (DLA) offers a compact source of high-charge, energetic electrons for generating secondary radiation or neutrons. While DLA in high-density plasma optimizes the energy transfer from a laser pulse to electrons, it…
It is shown here that Brillouin amplification can be used to produce picosecond pulses of petawatt power. Brillouin amplification is far more resilient to fluctuations in the laser and plasma parameters than Raman amplification, making it…
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…
Active energy compression scheme is presently being investigated for future laser-plasma accelerators. This method enables generating laser-plasma accelerator electron beams with a small, $\sim 10^{-5}$, relative slice energy spread. When…
We present the first experimental evidence of stimulated Raman re-scattering of a laser in plasma: The scattered light produced by the Raman instability is intense enough to scatter again through the same instability. Although never…
This investigation deals with enhanced plasma wakefield amplitude generated using two co-propagating laser pulses in homogeneous plasma. The configuration consists of a seed pulse followed by a trailing pulse, both linearly polarized and…
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…
We propose a new approach to high-intensity relativistic laser-driven electron acceleration in a plasma. Here, we demonstrate that a plasma wave generated by a stimulated forward-scattering of an incident laser pulse can be in the longest…
The generation of collimated, high brilliance $\gamma$-ray beams from a structured plasma channel target is studied by means of 2D PIC simulations. Simulation results reveal an optimum laser pulse pulse duration of $20\,\text{fs}$, for…
High-power structured light has a wide range of applications, from material processing and high-capacity optical communications to programmable electron beams, plasmas, and nuclear states. On-demand generation of structured light and…
Twisted Laguerre-Gaussian lasers, with orbital angular momentum and characterised by doughnut shaped intensity profiles, provide a transformative set of tools and research directions in a growing range of fields and applications, from…
The wealth of work in backward Raman amplification in plasma has focused on the extreme intensity limit, however backward Raman amplification may also provide an effective and practical mechanism for generating intense, broad bandwidth,…
The generation of shaped laser beams, or structured light, is of interest in a wide range of fields, from microscopy to fundamental physics. There are several ways to make shaped beams, most commonly using spatial light modulators comprised…
Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) hold great potential to produce high-quality high-energy electron beams (e beams) and simultaneously bright x-ray sources via betatron radiation, which are very promising for pump-probe study in ultrafast…