Horizons of petawatt laser technology

Effect of electromagnetic pulse transverse inhomogeneity on ion acceleration by radiation pressure

“…Studies of the high energy ion generation in the interaction between an ultraintense laser pulse and a small overdense targets, are of fundamental importance for various research fields ranging from the developing the ion sources for thermonuclear fusion and medical applications to the investigation of high energy density phenomena in relativistic astrophysics (see review articles [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and the literature cited therein).…”

Ultrashort Pulses

“…Amplifying these pulses can deliver extremely high peak power, allowing applications such as laser particle acceleration, or γ-ray generation via Compton scattering on relativistic electrons. Existing laser systems can provide pulses as brief as hundreds of attoseconds (10 -18 s) and as powerful as tens of petawatts (10 15 W); more advanced ones are being constructed or are planned (Corkum & Krausz, 2007, Korzhimanov et al, 2011.…”

Physics of Quasi-Monoenergetic Laser-Plasma Acceleration of Electrons in the Blowout Regime

“…The current record of accelerated electron energy is close to one gigaelectronvolt (GeV) (Clayton et al, 2010;Froula et al, 2009;Kneip et al, 2009;Leemans et al, 2006;Liu et al, 2011). Furthermore, ongoing introduction of sub-150 fs, compact, high repetition rate petawatt (PW) lasers (Aoyama et al, 2003;Gaul et al, 2010;Hein et al, 2006;Korzhimanov et al, 2011;Sung et al, 2010) opens possibilities beyond the GeV energy frontier (Gorbunov et al, 2005;Kalmykov et al, 2010a;Lu et al, 2007;Martins et al, 2010), enabling further steps towards practical designs of high-brightness x-(a) Normalized electron density (b) Accelerating gradient, −E z (in GV/cm) Fig. 1.…”