Generation of multi-hundred petawatt pulses by resonant Raman amplification in plasma

Abstract

Backward Raman amplification (BRA) in plasma has been proposed to produce overcritical high-power laser pulses. In this paper, an application based on CPA and BRA is promoted to generate multi-hundred petawatt laser pulses. The compression of short-wavelength (around 351nm) and picosecond pulses has been proposed for high output intensity and short plasma length. This principle was employed in an application and a scheme is demonstrated using a full-kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) code. The PIC code is also used to optimize key parameters in the resonant interaction. According to the simulated result using optimized parameters, the output seed fluence is amplified to 6.5kJ/cm2 and the full-width at half-maximum duration is compressed to 13fs, showing an energy transfer over 60%. Extending the result to the multidimensional case, a total energy of 3.9kJ and a laser power of 300PW are achievable, in a 0.6cm2 interaction spot. This result is helpful for the improvement of high-energy density physics.