Complete characterization of a plasma mirror for the production of high-contrast ultraintense laser pulses

Doumy, Gilles; Quéré, F.; Gobert, O.; Perdrix, M.; Martin, Ph.; Audebert, P.; Gauthier, J. C.; Geindre, J. P.; Wittmann, T.

doi:10.1103/physreve.69.026402

Cited by 320 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 33 publications

(36 reference statements)

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“…Since their density is comparable to the initial solid density (≈ 10 23 electrons/cm −3 ), their reflectivity can be as high as 80% [24]. An essential feature of plasma mirrors is that to a large extent they behave like ordinary mirrors:…”

Section: Plasma Mirrors As Electron Injectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to these remarkable properties, plasma mirrors are now largely used in ultrafast optics as a single-shot high-intensity optical device, e.g. to improve temporal contrast of femtosecond pulses [24], for the tight focusing of ultraintense beams [26], or for the generation of high-order harmonics and attosecond pulses [27,28].…”

Section: Plasma Mirrors As Electron Injectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vacuum laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using plasma mirror injectors

et al. 2015

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Accelerating particles to relativistic energies over very short distances using lasers has been a long standing goal in physics. Among the various schemes proposed for electrons, vacuum laser acceleration has attracted considerable interest and has been extensively studied theoretically because of its appealing simplicity: electrons interact with an intense laser field in vacuum and can be continuously accelerated, provided they remain at a given phase of the field until they escape the laser beam. But demonstrating this effect experimentally has proved extremely challenging, as it imposes stringent requirements on the conditions of injection of electrons in the laser field. Here, we solve this long-standing experimental problem for the first time by using a plasma mirror to inject electrons in an ultraintense laser field, and obtain clear evidence of vacuum laser acceleration.With the advent of PetaWatt class lasers, this scheme could provide a competitive source of very high charge (nC) and ultrashort relativistic electron beams.1 arXiv:1511.05936v1 [physics.plasm-ph] 18 Nov 2015Femtosecond lasers currently achieve light intensities at focus that far exceed 10 18 W/cm 2 at near infrared wavelengths [1]. One of the great prospects of these extreme intensities is the laser-driven acceleration of electrons to relativistic energies within very short distances.At present, the most advanced scheme consists of using ultraintense laser pulses to excite large amplitude wakefields in underdense plasmas, providing extremely high accelerating gradients in the order of 100 GV/m [2]. However, over the past decades, the direct acceleration of electrons by light in vacuum has also attracted considerable interest and has been extensively studied theoretically [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. These investigations have been driven by the fundamental interest of this most elementary interaction, and by its potential for extreme electron acceleration through electric fields of > 10's TV/m that ultraintense laser pulses provide.The underlying idea is to inject free electrons into an ultraintense laser field so that they always remain within a given half optical cycle of the field, where they constantly gain energy until they leave the focal volume. 1D Analytical calculations [3] show that for relativistic electrons, the maximum energy gain from this process is ∆E ∝ mc 2 γ 0 a 2 0 , where γ 0 is the electron initial Lorentz factor, and a 0 is the normalized laser vector potential, m the electron mass, and c the vacuum light velocity. Reaching high energy gains thus requires high initial energies γ 0 1 and/or ultrahigh laser amplitudes (a 0 1).In contrast with the large body of theoretical work published on this vacuum laser acceleration (VLA) of electrons to relativistic energies, experimental observations have largely remained elusive [12][13][14][15][16][17] -sometimes even controversial [18,19]-and have so far not demonstrated significant energy gains. This is because VLA occurs efficiently only for electrons injected in t...

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Section: Plasma Mirrors As Electron Injectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Plasma Mirrors As Electron Injectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vacuum laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using plasma mirror injectors

et al. 2015

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“…When an intense femtosecond laser pulse interacts with a solid, its rising edge strongly ionizes the surface atoms, creating a layer of plasma with near-solid electronic density (∼ 10 23 cm −3 ), which becomes highly reflectivea so-called plasma mirror -for light at wavelengths greater than a few tens of nanometers [13,14,15,16,17].…”

Section: Light-driven Plasma Mirrorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas

et al. 2012

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Today, light fields of controlled and measured waveform can be used to guide electron motion in atoms and molecules with attosecond precision. Here, we demonstrate attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas driven by extreme intensity (≈ 10 18 W/cm 2 ) light fields.Controlled few-cycle near-infrared light waves are tightly focused at the interface between vacuum and a solid-density plasma, where they launch and guide subcycle motion of electrons from the plasma with characteristic energies in the multi-kiloelectronvolt range -two orders of magnitude more than what has been achieved so far in atoms and molecules. Basic spectroscopy of the coherent extreme ultraviolet radiation emerging from the light-plasma interaction allows us to probe this collective motion of charge with sub-100-attosecond resolution. This is an important step towards attosecond control of charge dynamics in laser-driven plasma experiments.Two major trends can nowadays be identified in the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with matter. On the one hand, ultrahigh light intensities provided by multi-terawatt femtosecond lasers can be used to drive collective electron motion in plasmas up to the 0.1-1 gigaelectronvolt energy range [1], opening the way to very compact laser-based particle accelerators for nuclear and medical applications [2]. On the other hand, controlled few-cycle light waves can be used at moderate intensities to drive and probe the attosecond dynamics of few-electron motion in atoms [3,4,5,6], molecules [7,8] and condensed matter [9,10] -with typical energies * These authors contributed equally to this work. 1ranging between tens to a few hundred electronvolts [11]. Merging these two trends, i.e. using tailored waveforms of extreme intensity light to steer the collective motion of high-energy plasma electrons, will open brand new perspectives for imaging ultrafast charge dynamics during extreme intensity laser-plasma interactions. First experiments have already highlighted the need for waveform control when trying to reproducibly guide attosecond electronic processes in plasmas with intense few-cycle light fields [12]. For the first time, we use fully controlled few-cycle near-infrared (NIR) light fields of extreme intensity (10 18 W/cm 2 ) to reproducibly launch and probe collective electron motion at the interface between vacuum and a solid-density plasma with attosecond precision (Fig. 1a-b). Light-driven plasma mirrorsWhen an intense femtosecond laser pulse interacts with a solid, its rising edge strongly ionizes the surface atoms, creating a layer of plasma with near-solid electronic density (∼ 10 23 cm −3 ), which becomes highly reflectivea so-called plasma mirror -for light at wavelengths greater than a few tens of nanometers [13,14,15,16,17].During the interaction with the pulse, the plasma layer can only expand by a small fraction of the optical laser wavelength, λL, which leads to the formation of a very sharp interface with vacuum extending over a distance λL (Fig. 1b), typically of the order o...

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“…Recently the development of plasma mirrors for the temporal pulse cleaning has gained attention [8,[33][34][35][36]. Hence, the laser beam is weakly focused on an antireflection coated glass plate so that the peak intensity reaches about 10 15 − 10 16 W/cm 2 .…”

Section: Light Propagation In Plasmasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigations of Field Dynamics in Laser Plasmas with Proton Imaging

Sokollik

2011

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Complete characterization of a plasma mirror for the production of high-contrast ultraintense laser pulses

Cited by 320 publications

References 33 publications

Vacuum laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using plasma mirror injectors

Vacuum laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using plasma mirror injectors

Attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas

Investigations of Field Dynamics in Laser Plasmas with Proton Imaging

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