Science of High Energy, Single-Cycled Lasers

Abstract

With the advent of the Thin Film Compression, high energy single-cycled laser pulses have become an eminent path to the future of new high-field science. An existing CPA high power laser pulse such as a commercially available PW laser may be readily converted into a single-cycled laser pulse in the 10PW regime without losing much energy through the compression. We examine some of the scientific applications of this, such as laser ion accelerator called single-cycle laser acceleration (SCLA) and bow wake electron acceleration. Further, such a single-cycled laser pulse may be readily converted through relativistic compression into a single-cycled, X-ray laser pulse. We see that this is the quickest and very innovative way to ascend to the EW (exawatt) and zs (zeptosecond) science and technology. We suggest that such X-ray laser pulses have a broad and new horizon of applications. We have begun exploring the X-ray crystal (or nanostructured) wakefield accelerator and its broad and new applications into gamma rays. Here, we make a brief sketch of our survey of this vista of the new developments.