Laser Wakefield Driven Generation of Isolated Carrier-Envelope-Phase Tunable Intense Subcycle Pulses

Abstract

Sources of intense, ultrashort electromagnetic pulses enable applications such as attosecond pulse generation, control of electron motion in solids, and the observation of reaction dynamics at the electronic level. For such applications, both high intensity and carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) tunability are beneficial, yet hard to obtain with current methods. In this Letter, we present a new scheme for generation of isolated CEP tunable intense subcycle pulses with central frequencies that range from the midinfrared to the ultraviolet. It utilizes an intense laser pulse that drives a wake in a plasma, copropagating with a long-wavelength seed pulse. The moving electron density spike of the wake amplifies the seed and forms a subcycle pulse. Controlling the CEP of the seed pulse or the delay between driver and seed leads to CEP tunability, while frequency tunability can be achieved by adjusting the laser and plasma parameters. Our 2D and 3D particle-in-cell simulations predict laser-to-subcycle-pulse conversion efficiencies up to 1%, resulting in relativistically intense subcycle pulses.