Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Dong, Peng
• Reed, S A
• Yi, S A
• Kalmykov, S
• Shvets, G
• Downer, M C
• Matlis, N H
• Leemans, W P
• McGuffey, C
• Bulanov, S S
• Chvykov, V
• Kalintchenko, G
• Krushelnick, K
• Maksimchuk, A
• Matsuoka, T
• Thomas, A G R
• Yanovsky, V

Titel

Formation of optical bullets in laser-driven plasma bubble accelerators

Ist Teil von

• Physical review letters, 2010-04, Vol.104 (13), p.134801-134801, Article 134801

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2010

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

American Physical Society

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Electron density bubbles--wake structures generated in plasma of density n(e) approximately 10(19) cm(-3) by the light pressure of intense ultrashort laser pulses--are shown to reshape weak copropagating probe pulses into optical "bullets." The bullets are reconstructed using frequency-domain interferometric techniques in order to visualize bubble formation. Bullets are confined in three dimensions to plasma-wavelength size, and exhibit higher intensity, broader spectrum and flatter temporal phase than surrounding probe light, evidence of their compression by the bubble. Bullets observed at 0.8 approximately < n(e) approximately < 1.2x10(19) cm(-3) provide the first observation of bubble formation below the electron capture threshold. At higher n(e), bullets appear with high shot-to-shot stability together with relativistic electrons that vary widely in spectrum, and help relate bubble formation to fast electron generation.