Acceleration and gesture investigation of aluminum flyer with sub-millimeter diameter via laser-plasma collision﹡

Collision Avoidance via Laser Rangefinding

This thesis describes the design of a prototyped collision avoidance sensor for small autonomous vehicles. The system is based on laser rangefinding using time-of-flight, and built using small, low-cost, off-the-shelf components. The key requirement is for terrain mapping in an urban environment on small autonomous vehicles although it can potentially be used for any application that requires r...

Laser Acceleration of Particles with the Plasma Vector-Soliton

The closed, energy conserving system of electromagnetic-plasma equations describing the classical beat wave accelerator are shown to lead to an intrinsic lim it on the acceleration efficiency due to the pump depletion effect producing an intense trail of plasma waves. We propose and analyze with theory and simulations a wakeless accelerating structure composed of a nonlinear vector soliton. The...

Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction

Ion acceleration driven by superintense laser pulses is attracting an impressive and steadily increasing effort. Motivations can be found in the applicative potential and in the perspective to investigate novel regimesasavailable laser intensitieswill be increasing.Experimentshavedemonstrated, over awide range of laser and target parameters, the generation of multi-MeV proton and ion beams with...

Optical transverse injection in laser-plasma acceleration.

Laser-wakefield acceleration constitutes a promising technology for future electron accelerators. A crucial step in such an accelerator is the injection of electrons into the wakefield, which will largely determine the properties of the extracted beam. We present here a new paradigm of colliding-pulse injection, which allows us to generate high-quality electron bunches having both a very low em...

Strongly enhanced laser absorption and electron acceleration via resonant excitation of surface plasma waves