Related papers: Dynamic control of laser driven electron accelerat…
The emission characteristics of intense laser driven protons are controlled using ultra-strong (of the order of 10^9 V/m) electrostatic fields varying on a few ps timescale. The field structures are achieved by exploiting the high potential…
In laser-wakefield acceleration, an ultra-intense laser pulse is focused into an underdense plasma in order to accelerate electrons to relativistic velocities. In most cases, the pulses consist of multiple optical cycles and the interaction…
The dynamics of an electron in a strong laser field can be significantly altered by radiation reaction. This usually results in a strongly damped motion, with the electron losing a large fraction of its initial energy. Here we show that the…
Tunable lasers are essential and versatile tools in photonics, with applications spanning telecommunications, spectroscopy, and sensing. Advancements have aimed to expand tuning ranges, suppress mode hopping, and enable photonic…
We present a methodology for designing and measuring pulse front tilt in an ultrafast laser for use in dielectric laser acceleration. Previous research into dielectric laser accelerating modules has focused on measuring high accelerating…
Coherent optical control schemes exploit the coherence of laser pulses to change the phases of interfering dynamical pathways in order to manipulate dynamical processes. These active control methods are closely related to dynamical…
Direct laser acceleration (DLA) enables energy transfer from an ultra-high-intensity laser to plasma electrons and underpins many laser-driven particle and radiation-source concepts. A laser-driven azimuthal plasma magnetic field is a key…
This paper describes the first experimental demonstration of the guiding of a relativistic electron beam in a solid target using two co-linear, relativistically intense, picosecond laser pulses. The first pulse creates a magnetic field…
The strong influence of the electron dynamics provides the possibility of controlling the expansion of laser-produced plasmas by appropriately shaping the laser pulse. A simple irradiation scheme is proposed to tailor the explosion of large…
A planar laser pulse propagating in vacuum can exhibit an extremely large ponderomotive force. This force, however, cannot impart net energy to an electron: As the pulse overtakes the electron, the initial impulse from its rising edge is…
Flying focus techniques produce laser pulses whose focal points travel at arbitrary, controllable velocities. While this flexibility can enhance a broad range of laser-based applications, existing techniques constrain the motion of the…
This research demonstrates high-repetition-rate laser-accelerated ion beams via dual, intersecting, counterpropagating laser-driven blast waves to precisely shape underdense gas into long-lived near-critical density targets. The collision…
Compact laser-plasma acceleration of fast ions has made great strides since its discovery over two decades ago, resulting in the current generation of high-energy ($\geq 100\,\rm MeV$) ultracold beams over ultrashort ($\leq 1\,\rm ps$)…
A scheme for fast, compact, and controllable acceleration of heavy particles in vacuum is proposed, in which two counterpropagating lasers with variable frequencies drive a beat-wave structure with variable phase velocity, thus allowing for…
Laser wakefield accelerators rely on relativistically moving micron-sized plasma cavities that provide extremely high electric field >100GV/m. Here, we demonstrate transverse shaping of the plasma cavity to produce controlled sub-GeV…
The physics of energy transfer between the laser and the plasma in laser wakefield accelerators is studied. We find that wake excitation by arbitrary laser shapes can be parameterized using the total pulse energy and pulse depletion length.…
Emitting light towards on-demand directions is important for various optoelectronic applications, such as optical communication, displaying, and ranging. However, almost all existing directional emitters are assemblies of passive optical…
Injection of well-defined, high-quality electron populations into plasma waves is a key challenge of plasma wakefield accelerators. Here, we report on the first experimental demonstration of plasma density downramp injection in an…
A novel technique for divided-pulse amplification is presented in a proof-of-principle experiment. A pulse burst, cut out of the pulse train of a mode-locked oscillator, is amplified and temporally combined into a single pulse. High…
Important ongoing research on mode-locked fiber lasers aims at developing new types of multi-soliton regimes, such as soliton molecules, molecular complexes or soliton crystals. The on-demand generation of such multi-pulse structures is a…