Enhancement in self-compression due to co-propagating laser pulse in plasma

Abstract

The study proposes enhancement in self-compression of the laser pulse with relativistic nonlinearity in a plasma. It is presented that, a low-intensity laser pulse can tune the pulse duration and peak intensity of the high-intensity laser pulse. The coupled modified nonlinear Schrodinger equations (MNLS) have been established for both laser pulses in plasma. The enhancement in compression of the high-intensity laser pulse is solved by numerical methods. The nonlinearity of plasma, self-phase modulation (SPM), and group velocity dispersion (GVD) compress the laser pulse to the extremely short duration high peak intensity laser pulse. As a result, it is observed that the compression of the high-intensity laser pulse is highly sensitive to the combined intensity of both laser pulses, plasma density and even a small walkoff between two pulses can affect the high-intensity laser pulse compression.