Robustness of raman plasma amplifiers and their potential for attosecond pulse generation

James D Sadler,Marcin Sliwa,Thomas Miller,Muhammad F Kasim,Naren Ratan,Luke Ceurvorst,Alex Savin,Ramy Aboushelbaya,Peter A Norreys,Dan Haberberger,Andrew S Davies,Sara Bucht,Dustin H Froula,Jorge Vieira,Ricardo A Fonseca,Luís O Silva,Robert Bingham,Kevin Glize,Raoul M.G.M Trines

doi:10.1016/j.hedp.2017.05.007

Abstract

Raman back-scatter from an under-dense plasma can be used to compress laser pulses, as shown by several previous experiments in the optical regime. A short seed pulse counter-propagates with a longer pump pulse and energy is transferred to the shorter pulse via stimulated Raman scattering. The robustness of the scheme to non-ideal plasma density conditions is demonstrated through particle-in-cell simulations. The scale invariance of the scheme ensures that compression of XUV pulses from a free electron laser is also possible, as demonstrated by further simulations. The output is as short as 300 as, with energy typical of fourth generation sources.

Highlights

TagedPReaching high power and high brightness laser pulses is a primary goal for high energy density science, both for producing and diagnosing extreme plasma conditions
High power pulses across a wide spectral range have a myriad of applications in inertial confinement fusion [1], atomic physics [2], laser particle acceleration [3] and generating matter-antimatter plasmas [4]
The resulting advances are applicable to many fields including biochemistry, semiconductors and atomic physics

Summary

Introduction

TagedPReaching high power and high brightness laser pulses is a primary goal for high energy density science, both for producing and diagnosing extreme plasma conditions. Chirped pulse amplification using solid state grating compressors is the highest power method in the near optical range, free electron lasers have reached unprecedented brightness deep in to the Xray spectrum. Both suffer the drawback of requiring large scale infrastructure with continuing replacement, limiting the proliferation and maximal power of such sources. TagedPHowever, several conditions must be met to preserve the plasma wave fidelity; its small wavelength of approximately half that of the pump pulse makes it delicate [11]. We show, using particle-in-cell simulations, that the scheme is robust to typical variations

Robustness of raman amplifiers to experimental perturbations

Findings

Summary of attosecond XUV pulse generation