Anticorrelation between Ion Acceleration and Nonlinear Coherent Structures from Laser-Underdense Plasma Interaction

Abstract

In laser-plasma experiments, we observed that ion acceleration from the Coulomb explosion of the plasma channel bored by the laser, is prevented when multiple plasma instabilities such as filamentation and hosing, and nonlinear coherent structures (vortices/post-solitons) appear in the wake of an ultrashort laser pulse. The tailoring of the longitudinal plasma density ramp allows us to control the onset of these insabilities. We deduced that the laser pulse is depleted into these structures in our conditions, when a plasma at about 10% of the critical density exhibits a gradient on the order of 250 μm (gaussian fit), thus hindering the acceleration. A promising experimental setup with a long pulse is demonstrated enabling the excitation of an isolated coherent structure for polarimetric measurements and, in further perspectives, parametric studies of ion plasma acceleration efficiency.

4 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Measurement of Magnetic-Field Structures in a Laser-Wakefield Accelerator
• Observation of post-soliton expansion following laser propagation through an underdense plasma
• Bow wave from ultra-intense electromagnetic pulses in plasmas
• Self-guiding of 100 TW Femtosecond Laser Pulses in Centimeter-scale Underdense Plasma
• Observation of a Long-Wavelength Hosing Modulation of a High-Intensity Laser Pulse in Underdense Plasma

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Laser acceleration of highly energetic carbon ions using a double-layer target composed of slightly underdense plasma and ultrathin foil
• Multi-MeV electron acceleration by sub-terawatt laser pulses
• Short Intense Laser Pulse Collapse in Near-Critical Plasma
• Spectral modification of shock accelerated ions using hydrodynamically shaped gas target
• Theory of ball lightning
• Spin polarized proton beam generation from gas-jet targets by intense laser pulses
• Relativistic breather-like solitary waves with linear polarization in cold plasmas
• Modelling relativistic solitary wave interactions in over-dense plasmas: a perturbed nonlinear Schröndinger equation framework
• On annihilation of the relativistic electron vortex pair in collisionless plasmas
• Relativistic quasi-solitons and embedded solitons with circular polarization in cold plasmas