Transition radiation from a beam of hot electrons generated in ultraintense laser plasma interaction is theoretically studied. The total radiation is separated into two parts: one is incoherent transition radiation ͑ITR͒, the other is coherent transition radiation ͑CTR͒. The spectrum of ITR just depends on the particle velocity distribution in the beam. The angular distribution of ITR varies from sin 2 , and approaches the angular distribution of the beam when the hot electron temperature increases from the nonrelativistic limit (TӶmc 2) to the ultrarelativistic limit (Tӷmc 2). The spectrum of CTR is dependent on the particle configuration as well as their velocities. Any microbunching in the beam can greatly enhance the CTR intensity at the microbunching frequency, from which the dominant heating process can be inferred. The effects of target thickness and hot electron temperature on CTR intensity are also calculated. The simplified model shows that the CTR intensity decreases with the increase of the target thickness, and increases with the hot electron temperature. The divergence of the beam can broaden the CTR spectrum.

We report a 43-fold enhancement in the hard x-ray emission (in the 150-300 keV range) from copper nanorod arrays (compared to a polished Cu surface) when excited by 30-fs, 800-nm laser pulses with an intensity of 10 16 W/cm 2 . The temperature of the hot electrons that emit the x rays is 11 times higher. Significantly, the x-ray yield enhancement is found to depend on both the aspect ratio as well as the cluster size of the nanorods. We show that the higher yield arises from enhanced laser absorption owing to the extremely high local electric fields around the nanorod tips. Particle-in-cell plasma simulations reproduce these observations and provide pointers to further optimization of the x-ray emission.

A scheme is proposed to produce high-quality quasi-monoenergetic attosecond electron bunches based on laser ponderomotive-force acceleration along the surface of wire or slice targets. Two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that the electron energy depends weakly on the target density. A simple analytical model shows that the electron energy scales linearly with the laser field amplitude, in good agreement with the simulation results. Electron bunches produced by this scheme are suitable for applications such as coherent x-ray radiation, radiography, and injectors in accelerators, etc.

Under the grazing incidence of a relativistic intense laser pulse onto a solid target, two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that intense quasistatic magnetic and electric fields are generated near the front target surface during the interaction. Some electrons are confined in these quasistatic fields and move along the target surface with betatron oscillations. When this oscillating frequency is close to the laser frequency in the particle frame, these electrons can be accelerated significantly in the reflected laser field, similar to the inverse free-electron-laser acceleration. An analytical model for this surface betatron acceleration is proposed.

Freeman, R. R.; Gu, P.; Hatchett, S. P.; Hey, D.; Hill, J.; Key, M. H.; Izawa, Y.; King, J.; Kitagawa, Y.; Kodama, R.; Langdon, A. B.; Lasinski, B. F.; Lei, A.; MacKinnon, A. J.; Patel, P.; Stephens, R.; Tampo, M.; Tanaka, K. A.; Town, R.; Toyama, Y.; Tsutsumi, T.; Wilks, S. C.; Yabuuchi, T.; Zheng, J. Citation Physics of Plasmas.

A theoretical analysis for the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) instability driven by two laser beams with certain frequency difference is presented. It is found that strong coupling and enhanced SRS take place only when the unstable regions for each beam are overlapped in the wavenumber space. Hence a threshold of the beam frequency difference for their decoupling is found as a function of their intensity and plasma density. Based upon this, a strategy to suppress the SRS instability with decoupled broadband lasers (DBLs) is proposed. A DBL can be composed of tens or even hundreds of beamlets, where the beamlets are distributed uniformly in a broad spectrum range such as over 10% of the central frequency. Decoupling among the beamlets is found due to the limited beamlet energy and suitable frequency difference between neighboring beamlets. Particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that SRS can be almost completely suppressed with DBLs under the laser intensity ∼ 10 15 W/cm 2 . DBLs can be attractive for driving inertial confined fusion.

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Two-dimensional metasurface structures have recently been proposed to reduce the challenges of fabrication of traditional plasmonic metamaterials. However, complex designs and sophisticated fabrication procedures are still required. Here, we present a unique one-dimensional (1-D) metasurface based on bilayered metallic nanowire gratings, which behaves as an ideal polarized beam splitter, producing strong negative reflection for transverse-magnetic (TM) light and efficient reflection for transverse-electric (TE) light. The large anisotropy resulting from this TE-metal-like/TM-dielectric-like feature can be explained by the dispersion curve based on the Bloch theory of periodic metal-insulator-metal waveguides. The results indicate that this photon manipulation mechanism is fundamentally different from those previously proposed for 2-D or 3-D metastructures. Based on this new material platform, a novel form of metasurface holography is proposed and demonstrated, in which an image can only be reconstructed by using a TM light beam. By reducing the metamaterial structures to 1-D, our metasurface beam splitter exhibits the qualities of cost-efficient fabrication, robust performance, and high tunability, in addition to its applicability over a wide range of working wavelengths and incident angles. This development paves a foundation for metasurface structure designs towards practical metamaterial applications.