Self-guiding of 100 TW Femtosecond Laser Pulses in Centimeter-scale Underdense Plasma

Abstract

An experiment for studying laser self-guiding has been carried out for the high power ultrashort pulse laser interaction with an underdense plasma slab. Formation of an extremely long plasma channel and its bending are observed when the laser pulse power is much higher than the critical power for relativistic self-focusing. The long self-guiding channel formation is accompanied by electron acceleration with a low transverse emittance and high electric current. Particle-in-cell simulations show that laser bending occurs when the accelerated electrons overtake the laser pulse and modify the refractive index in the region in front of the laser pulse.

References in corpus (1)

• Laser wakefield acceleration by petawatt ultra-short laser pulses

Cited by in corpus (9)

• High Power Gamma-Ray Flash Generation in Ultra Intense Laser-Plasma Interaction
• Relativistic Tennis with Photons: Demonstration of Frequency Upshifting by a Relativistic Flying Mirror through Two Colliding Laser Pulses
• Observation of post-soliton expansion following laser propagation through an underdense plasma
• Spectral modification of shock accelerated ions using hydrodynamically shaped gas target
• Anticorrelation between Ion Acceleration and Nonlinear Coherent Structures from Laser-Underdense Plasma Interaction
• Electromagnetic Solitons in Quantum Vacuum
• 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
• Relativistic quasi-solitons and embedded solitons with circular polarization in cold plasmas