Laser dynamics in transversely inhomogeneous plasma and its relevance to wakefield acceleration

Abstract

We present full set of coupled equations describing the weakly relativistic dynamics of a laser in a plasma with transverse inhomogeneity. We apply variational principle approach to obtain these coupled equations governing laser spot-size, transverse wavenumber, curvature, transverse centroid, etc. We observe that such plasma inhomogeneity can lead to stronger self-focusing. We further discuss the guiding conditions of laser in parabolic plasma channels. With the help of multi-dimensional particle in cell simulations the study is extended to the blowout regime of laser wakefield acceleration to show laser as well as self-injected electron bunch steering in plasma to generate unconventional particle trajectories. Our simulation results demonstrate that such transverse inhomogeneities due to asymmetric self focusing lead to asymmetric bubble excitation, thus inducing off-axis self-injection.