Electromagnetically Induced Guiding and Superradiant Amplification of Counter-Propagating Lasers in Plasma

Conference · Sat Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:2973

Fisch, N J ^[1]; Shvets, G

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1. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

The interaction of counter-propagating laser pulses in a plasma in considered. When the frequencies of the two lasers are close, nonlinear modification of the refraction index results in the mutual focusing of the two beams. A short (of order the plasma period) laser pulse can be nonlinearly focused by a long counter-propagating beam which extends over the entire guiding length. It is also demonstrated that a short (< 1/ omega (sub p)) laser pulse can be superradiantly amplified by a counter-propagating long low-intensity pump while remaining ultra-short. Particle-in-Cell simulations indicate that pump depletion can be as high as 40%. This implies that the long pump is efficiently compressed in time without frequency chirping and pulse stretching, making the superradiant amplification an interesting alternative to the conventional method of producing ultra-intense pulses by the chirped-pulse amplification.

• Research Organization: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research (ER)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76CH03073
• OSTI ID: 2973
• Report Number(s): Cfp-3932; ON: DE00002973
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
Computerized Simulation
Focusing
Laser Radiation
Nonlinear Optics
Plasma
Pulses
Superradiance