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Journal ArticleDOI

Compression of amplified chirped optical pulses

01 Dec 1985-Optics Communications (North-Holland)-Vol. 56, Iss: 3, pp 219-221
TL;DR: In this paper, the amplification and subsequent recompression of optical chirped pulses were demonstrated using a system which produces 1.06 μm laser pulses with pulse widths of 2 ps and energies at the millijoule level.
About: This article is published in Optics Communications.The article was published on 1985-12-01. It has received 3961 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Ultrashort pulse & Chirped pulse amplification.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a capsule is imploded as in the conventional approach to inertial fusion to assemble a high density fuel configuration, and a hole is bored through the capsule corona composed of ablated material, as the critical density is pushed close to the high density core of the capsule by the ponderomotive force associated with high intensity laser light.
Abstract: Ultrahigh intensity lasers can potentially be used in conjunction with conventional fusion lasers to ignite inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsules with a total energy of a few tens of kilojoules of laser light, and can possibly lead to high gain with as little as 100 kJ. A scheme is proposed with three phases. First, a capsule is imploded as in the conventional approach to inertial fusion to assemble a high‐density fuel configuration. Second, a hole is bored through the capsule corona composed of ablated material, as the critical density is pushed close to the high‐density core of the capsule by the ponderomotive force associated with high‐intensity laser light. Finally, the fuel is ignited by suprathermal electrons, produced in the high‐intensity laser–plasma interactions, which then propagate from critical density to this high‐density core. This new scheme also drastically reduces the difficulty of the implosion, and thereby allows lower quality fabrication and less stringent beam quality and symmet...

2,596 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the landmarks of the 30-odd-year evolution of ultrashort-pulse laser physics and technology culminating in the generation of intense few-cycle light pulses and discuss the impact of these pulses on high-field physics.
Abstract: The rise time of intense radiation determines the maximum field strength atoms can be exposed to before their polarizability dramatically drops due to the detachment of an outer electron. Recent progress in ultrafast optics has allowed the generation of ultraintense light pulses comprising merely a few field oscillation cycles. The arising intensity gradient allows electrons to survive in their bound atomic state up to external field strengths many times higher than the binding Coulomb field and gives rise to ionization rates comparable to the light frequency, resulting in a significant extension of the frontiers of nonlinear optics and (nonrelativistic) high-field physics. Implications include the generation of coherent harmonic radiation up to kiloelectronvolt photon energies and control of the atomic dipole moment on a subfemtosecond $(1{\mathrm{f}\mathrm{s}=10}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}15}\mathrm{}\mathrm{s})$ time scale. This review presents the landmarks of the 30-odd-year evolution of ultrashort-pulse laser physics and technology culminating in the generation of intense few-cycle light pulses and discusses the impact of these pulses on high-field physics. Particular emphasis is placed on high-order harmonic emission and single subfemtosecond extreme ultraviolet/x-ray pulse generation. These as well as other strong-field processes are governed directly by the electric-field evolution, and hence their full control requires access to the (absolute) phase of the light carrier. We shall discuss routes to its determination and control, which will, for the first time, allow access to the electromagnetic fields in light waves and control of high-field interactions with never-before-achieved precision.

2,547 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Theoretical models and qualitative explanations of experimental results are presented in this paper for femtosecond laser ablation of solid targets by 0.2-5000 ps Ti: Sapphire laser pulses.
Abstract: Laser ablation of solid targets by 0.2–5000 ps Ti: Sapphire laser pulses is studied. Theoretical models and qualitative explanations of experimental results are presented. Advantages of femtosecond lasers for precise material processing are discussed and demonstrated.

2,513 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
30 Sep 2004-Nature
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that this randomization of electrons in phase space can be suppressed and that the quality of the electron beams can be dramatically enhanced.
Abstract: Particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of fields, ranging from medicine and biology to high-energy physics. The accelerating fields in conventional accelerators are limited to a few tens of MeV m(-1), owing to material breakdown at the walls of the structure. Thus, the production of energetic particle beams currently requires large-scale accelerators and expensive infrastructures. Laser-plasma accelerators have been proposed as a next generation of compact accelerators because of the huge electric fields they can sustain (>100 GeV m(-1)). However, it has been difficult to use them efficiently for applications because they have produced poor-quality particle beams with large energy spreads, owing to a randomization of electrons in phase space. Here we demonstrate that this randomization can be suppressed and that the quality of the electron beams can be dramatically enhanced. Within a length of 3 mm, the laser drives a plasma bubble that traps and accelerates plasma electrons. The resulting electron beam is extremely collimated and quasi-monoenergetic, with a high charge of 0.5 nC at 170 MeV.

1,854 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
08 Jul 2004-Nature
TL;DR: A laser accelerator that produces electron beams with an energy spread of a few per cent, low emittance and increased energy (more than 109 electrons above 80 MeV) and opens the way for compact and tunable high-brightness sources of electrons and radiation.
Abstract: Laser-driven accelerators, in which particles are accelerated by the electric field of a plasma wave (the wakefield) driven by an intense laser, have demonstrated accelerating electric fields of hundreds of GV m-1 (refs 1–3) These fields are thousands of times greater than those achievable in conventional radio-frequency accelerators, spurring interest in laser accelerators4,5 as compact next-generation sources of energetic electrons and radiation To date, however, acceleration distances have been severely limited by the lack of a controllable method for extending the propagation distance of the focused laser pulse The ensuing short acceleration distance results in low-energy beams with 100 per cent electron energy spread1,2,3, which limits potential applications Here we demonstrate a laser accelerator that produces electron beams with an energy spread of a few per cent, low emittance and increased energy (more than 109 electrons above 80 MeV) Our technique involves the use of a preformed plasma density channel to guide a relativistically intense laser, resulting in a longer propagation distance The results open the way for compact and tunable high-brightness sources of electrons and radiation

1,749 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the theory of the diffraction grating pair was developed by expanding the frequency dependence of the phase shift as far as the quadratic frequency term, and the analogy between pulse compression and Fresnel diffraction was treated.
Abstract: The theory of the diffraction grating pair is developed by expanding the frequency dependence of the phase shift as far as the quadratic frequency term. The analogy between pulse compression and Fresnel diffraction is treated. The effect of the cubic phase term is discussed for ultrashort pulses having appreciable fractional bandwidth.

1,343 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

157 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a factor of 12 compression of the 5.4-ps, 1-kW pulses from a mode-locked dye laser was achieved by the combined action of self-phase modulation and group velocity dispersion during passage through a 30m singlemode optical fiber.
Abstract: We report a factor of 12 compression of the 5.4‐ps, 1‐kW pulses from a mode‐locked dye laser. The pulses were frequency broadened and linearly chirped by the combined action of self‐phase modulation and group velocity dispersion during passage through a 30‐m single‐mode optical fiber. The fiber output pulses were then compressed to 450‐fs, 3‐kW pulses by passage through a diffraction grating based dispersive delay line. These short pulses were tunable over the 300‐A range of the laser dye.

114 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, an optical device exhibiting both a time versus frequency and a space versus frequency dispersion has made possible the performance of 1) the pulse by pulse spectrum analysis of mode-locked Nd-glass laser trains and 2) the shaping of these pulses by a completely passive process.
Abstract: An optical device exhibiting both a time versus frequency and a space versus frequency dispersion has made possible the performance of 1) the pulse by pulse spectrum analysis of mode-locked Nd-glass laser trains and 2) the shaping of these pulses by a completely passive process. The relatively poor performance of this spectrum analyzer (7 spectral lines resolved) is essentially due to the rise time of the photodetection setup utilized in the experiments. The shaping consists in a preliminary pulse expansion (from picoseconds to nanoseconds), which gives linear FM long pulses whose envelopes are then modulated with a rise time of 50 ps by a spectral filtering simply obtained by diaphragms and neutral filters.

59 citations