Optical guiding of intense laser pulses by fast Z-pinch discharge

✍ Scribed by Tomonao Hosokai; Masaki Kando; Hideki Dewa; Hideyuki Kotaki; Syuji Kondo; Syuhei Kanazawa; Noboru Hasegawa; Kazuhiko Horioka; Kazuhisa Nakajima

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 465 KB
• Volume: 136
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0424-7760
• DOI: 10.1002/eej.1061

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

We have proposed the optical guiding of intense laser pulses by fast Z‐pinch for channel‐guided laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA). The method has been developed based on capillary discharge‐pumped X‐ray laser technique. A discharge through preionized helium gas driven by a current of 4.8 kA with a rise time of 15 ns proved able to produce a uniform guiding channel with good reproducibility, less than the time jitter of 1.8 ns. The observed guiding channel formation process was corroborated by 1D‐MHD simulation. With this new guiding method, an intense Ti‐sapphire laser pulse (λ = 790 nm, 2.2 TW, 90 fs, 1 × 10^17^ W/cm^2^) was transported through the channel over a distance of 2 cm, corresponding to 12.5 times the Rayleigh length. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 136(3): 19–27, 2001