Relativistic Plasma-Wave Excitation by Collinear Optical Mixing

Electromagnetic Waves and Their Application to Charged Particle Acceleration

“…In this case, a novel parametric instability as a result of the modulation of the Lorentz force by the largeamplitude plasma wave is found when the beat frequency is twice the plasma frequency. The high phase velocity electron plasma wave excited by collinear optical mixing has been detected directly [9], where the frequency, wave number, spatial extent, saturation time, and peak amplitude were all measured experimentally and found to be in reasonable agreement with the theoretical expectations. The resonant excitation of an electron plasma wave and its effects on the density profile steepening have been theoretically studied by using a modified, warm-capacitor model [10], where the scaling laws characterizing the process were established and the wave structure and density profile were self-consistently determined.…”

Petawatt class lasers worldwide

“…Subsequent work utilizing the then available lasers investigated excitation of instabilities [37] and driving of the plasma at two different wavelengths using either 2 ns pulses from a carbon dioxide based laser [38] or Nd:glass lasers [39] to generate suitable beat-wave plasma modulations. By the mid 1990s, wave-breaking [40] generated electron beams with thermallike spectra up to 45 MeV using a 25 TW picosecond driver were achieved.…”

Excitation and Control of Plasma Wakefields by Multiple Laser Pulses

“…The MP-LWFA approach is closely related to the plasma beat-wave accelerator (PBWA) [1,33], in which two long laser pulses of angular frequencies ω 1 and ω 2 = ω 1 + ω p0 are combined to form a driving pulse modulated at ω p0 . Beat-wave excitation of plasma waves [34][35][36], and their application to accelerating electrons [37,38], have both been demonstrated.…”