Holographic Plasma Lenses

Abstract

A hologram fully encodes a three-dimensional light field by imprinting the interference between the field and a reference beam in a recording medium. Here we show that two collinear pump lasers with different foci overlapped in a gas jet produce a holographic plasma lens capable of focusing or collimating a probe laser at intensities several orders-of-magnitude higher than the limits of a nonionized optic. We outline the theory of these diffractive plasma lenses and present simulations for two plasma mechanisms that allow their construction: spatially varying ionization and ponderomotively driven ion-density fluctuations. Damage-resistant plasma optics are necessary for manipulating highintensity light, and divergence control of high-intensity pulses -provided by holographic plasma lenses -will be a critical component of high-power plasma-based lasers.

Plasma zone plate for high-power lasers driven by a Laguerre-Gaussian beam

“…Let n l and n h be the refractive indexes of two adjacent rings, ∆r be the distance between the two rings, D be the thickness of the PZP and k b be the wavenumber of the probe beam. The characteristic length to produce a significant amplitude modulation can be given by L = ( [37] and the phase shift can be given by ∆φ = (n h − n l )k b D [23]. Therefore, the probe beam will be modulated into an emergent beam composed of alternating bright and dark rings (when D L) together with phase shift, which is similar to that of an FZP, and focused at multiple foci during the further propagation.…”

“…With the increasing peak intensity of lasers, manipulation of such high-power lasers has become increasingly challenging because the size of the traditional solid-state optical components must be enlarged to avoid laser-induced thermal damage [9], which can be extremely costly and technically challenging for large-scale PW laser systems [10]. As a result, plasmabased optical components composed of free electrons and ions, which are not limited by optical damage as the traditional solid-state optical components, have become potential alternatives for high-power laser manipulation and have been extensively studied in recent years [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. A series of plasma-based optical components and applications have been proposed, such as plasma gratings or photonic crystals with band structure [11][12][13], plasma holograms for focusing and mode conversion [14], plasma mirrors for probing strong field quantum electrodynamics [15,16], plasma lenses for laser shaping [17], plasma waveplates for polarization manipulation [18][19][20] and plasma-based ellipsoidal mirror [21] and compound parabolic concentrator [22] with an intensity toleration over 10 12 W/cm 2 for focusing lasers.…”

“…A series of plasma-based optical components and applications have been proposed, such as plasma gratings or photonic crystals with band structure [11][12][13], plasma holograms for focusing and mode conversion [14], plasma mirrors for probing strong field quantum electrodynamics [15,16], plasma lenses for laser shaping [17], plasma waveplates for polarization manipulation [18][19][20] and plasma-based ellipsoidal mirror [21] and compound parabolic concentrator [22] with an intensity toleration over 10 12 W/cm 2 for focusing lasers. Recently, Edwards et al demonstrated a highly-efficient plasma-based zone plate by two copropagating lasers which tolerates a maximum intensity of 10 17 W/cm 2 [23]. The structure of the zone plate reminds us of the intensity patterns of Laguerre-Gaussian lasers.…”

Depolarization of intense laser beams by dynamic plasma density gratings

“…Moreover, magnetized plasmas may have some specific advantages in the control and amplification of intense laser pulses [13][14][15][16] . Further, holographic plasma lenses have recently been proposed as a novel plasma optical device for broad applications [17][18][19] . In particular, laser-induced plasma density gratings (PDGs) have been extensively studied and proposed for wide potential applications, including the temporal compression, polarization control and manipulation of intense laser pulses [20][21][22][23][24][25] .…”

Multiphase nonlinear electron plasma waves

“…In most applications, the electron plasma wave is controlled by the ponderomotive force of one or more lasers. For example, in plasma photonics, complex density structures are envisioned for transient plasma gratings [17], holographic gratings [18], and polarizers [19][20][21][22]. Resonant plasma instabilities, and the concomitant density modulations, lead to energy transfer between laser pulses.…”