Abstract
The use of plasmas provides a way to overcome the low damage threshold of classical solid-state based optical materials, which is the main limitation encountered in producing and manipulating intense and energetic laser pulses. Plasmas can directly amplify or alter the characteristics of ultra-short laser pulses via the three-wave coupling equations for parametric processes. The strong-coupling regime of Brillouin scattering (sc-SBS) is of particular interest: recent progress in this domain is presented here. This includes the role of the global phase in the spatio-temporal evolution of the three-wave coupled equations for backscattering that allows a description of the coupling dynamics and the various stages of amplification from the initial growth to the so-called self-similar regime. The understanding of the phase evolution allows control of the directionality of the energy transfer via the phase relation between the pulses. A scheme that exploits this coupling in order to use the plasma as a wave plate is also suggested.
Highlights
New fundamental physics effects originating from laser-matter interaction require very high laser intensities
The ever higher intensity in conjunction with the short pulse length presents major obstacles for the optical elements required to generate, transport, and focus the laser pulse due to the low damage threshold of materials which is less than 1 J/cm2
We propose a novel application of laser-plasma interaction in the context of plasma optics: a wave plate
Summary
New fundamental physics effects originating from laser-matter interaction require very high laser intensities. This normally means ever shorter pulse lengths, as the available energy and the possibility to compress it is limited. Due to the fact that in a plasma matter is already broken down, it can sustain much higher fluences than standard optical materials This makes it interesting for high-intensity laser pulses. We propose a novel application of laser-plasma interaction in the context of plasma optics: a wave plate It exploits the sophisticated nature of the phase in the strong-coupling three-wave model, and can be tested in a set-up based on the most recent succesful experimental results.
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