Some curious aspects of plasma wakefields and lenses

Abstract

In this talk I will describe some recent work on two aspects of plasma‐based beam handling devices: plasma wakefields for accelerating particle beams and plasma lenses for focusing them. Wakefields and lenses are rich in physical phenomena, some of them very counterintuitive. It is some of these curious aspects of wakefields and lenses that I will address today.In Section I four topics on plasma wakefields are described, including relativistically self‐focused laser pulses (that aren’t always focused), acceleration and deceleration of the laser photons, pump depleting laser pulses (that get bigger), and non‐linear addition of wakes (when 2+2=5). In Section II the plasma lens is briefly described, followed by an analysis of adiabatic plasma lenses (that aren’t adiabatic).