Blast wave diagnostic for the Petawatt laser system

A Blast Wave Diagnostic for the Petawatt Laser System

Petawatt laser absorption bounded

The interaction of petawatt (10(15) W) lasers with solid matter forms the basis for advanced scientific applications such as table-top particle accelerators, ultrafast imaging systems and laser fusion. Key metrics for these applications relate to absorption, yet conditions in this regime are so nonlinear that it is often impossible to know the fraction of absorbed light f, and even the range of...

Integrated laser–target interaction experiments on the RAL petawatt laser

1 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA 2 Department of Physics, Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, BY7 1NN, UK 3 Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, Reading, RG7 4PR, UK 4 CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon., OX11 0QX, UK 5 Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA 6 Department of Applied Sciences, University of California Da...

Time evolution and asymmetry of a laser produced blast wave

Laser wakefield acceleration by petawatt ultra-short laser pulses

An ultra-short (about 30 fs) petawatt laser pulse focused with a wide focal spot (about 100 μm) in a rarefied plasma (n0 ∼ 10 cm) excites a nonlinear plasma wakefield which can accelerate injected electrons up to the GeV energy without any pulse channelling. In these conditions, propagation of the laser pulse with an over-critical power for relativistic self-focusing is almost the same as in va...