John Patrick Farmer

Chirped pulse Raman amplification in plasma

Raman amplification in plasma has been proposed to be a promising method of amplifying short radiation pulses. Here, we investigate chirped pulse Raman amplification (CPRA) where the pump pulse is chirped and leads to spatiotemporal distributed gain, which exhibits superradiant scaling in the linear regime, usually associated with the nonlinear pump depletion and Compton amplification regimes. CPRA has the potential to serve as a high-efficiency high-fidelity amplifier/compressor stage.

Raman amplification in plasma: Wavebreaking and heating effects

A three-wave model has been developed to investigate the influence of wavebreaking and thermal effects on the Raman amplification in plasma. This has been benchmarked against a particle-in-cell code with positive results. A new regime, the “thermal chirp” regime, has been identified and illustrated. Here the shift in plasma resonance due to heating of the plasma by a monochromatic pump allows a probe pulse to be amplified and compressed without significant pump depletion. In regimes where damping dominates, it is found that inverse bremsstrahlung dominates at high densities, and improved growth rates may be achieved by preheating the plasma. At low densities or high pump intensities, wavebreaking acts to limit amplification. The inclusion of thermal effects can dramatically reduce the peak attainable intensity because of the reduced wavebreaking limit at finite temperatures.

Chirped pulse Raman amplification in warm plasma: towards controlling saturation

Stimulated Raman backscattering in plasma is potentially an efficient method of amplifying laser pulses to reach exawatt powers because plasma is fully broken down and withstands extremely high electric fields. Plasma also has unique nonlinear optical properties that allow simultaneous compression of optical pulses to ultra-short durations. However, current measured efficiencies are limited to several percent. Here we investigate Raman amplification of short duration seed pulses with different chirp rates using a chirped pump pulse in a preformed plasma waveguide. We identify electron trapping and wavebreaking as the main saturation mechanisms, which lead to spectral broadening and gain saturation when the seed reaches several millijoules for durations of 10’s – 100’s fs for 250 ps, 800 nm chirped pump pulses. We show that this prevents access to the nonlinear regime and limits the efficiency, and interpret the experimental results using slowly-varying-amplitude, current-averaged particle-in-cell simulations. We also propose methods for achieving higher efficiencies.

Plasma density measurements using chirped pulse broad-band Raman amplification

Stimulated Raman backscattering is used as a non-destructive method to determine the density of plasma media at localized positions in space and time. By colliding two counter-propagating, ultra-short laser pulses with a spectral bandwidth larger than twice the plasma frequency, amplification occurs at the Stokes wavelengths, which results in regions of gain and loss separated by twice the plasma frequency, from which the plasma density can be deduced. By varying the relative delay between the laser pulses, and therefore the position and timing of the interaction, the spatio-temporal distribution of the plasma density can be mapped out.

The role of absorption in Raman amplification in warm plasma

Raman backscattering in plasma is subject to—collisional and collisionless—absorption of the interacting waves. A model for studying its role over a wide parameter range is developed by coupling the envelope equations for pump, probe, and plasma waves with those describing heating of the plasma. The latter is treated as a warm fluid, making the model useful for moderate temperatures and field amplitudes. The main effect is the time-dependent Bohm–Gross shift of the Langmuir resonance frequency, which can either enhance or suppress amplification; this can be further controlled by varying the frequency of the pump. Anisotropy in the collisional processes for longitudinal and transverse waves leads to temperature anisotropy at high field amplitudes. Direct Landau damping of the plasma wave, as well as its contribution to the frequency shift, can be neglected due to rapid saturation.

Experimental investigation of chirp pulse Raman amplification in plasma

Raman backscattering (RBS) in plasma has been proposed as a way of amplifying and compressing high intensity laser pulses for more than a decade. Not like the chirped pulse ampliffication (CPA) laser system, in which the laser intensity is limited by the damage threshold of conventional media, plasma is capable of tolerating ultrahigh laser intensities, together with RBS which is enable to transfer laser energy efficiently from a higher frequency pulse to a lower one, this scheme opens a scenario of the next generation of laser amplifiers. Experimental investigation has been carried out with a long (250 ps) pump pulse and a counter-propagating short (70 fs) probe pulse interacting in an under-dense preformed capillary plasma channel. Energy transfer from the pump pulse to the probe was observed. The guiding property was studied and the energy gain dependence of pump and probe energy were recorded.

Study of chirped pulse amplification based on Raman backscattering

Raman backscattering (RBS) in plasma is an attractive source of intense, ultrashort laser pulses, which has the potential asa basic for a new generation of laser amplifiers.1 Taking advantage of plasma, which can withstand extremely high power densities and can offer high efficiencies over short distances, Raman amplification in plasma could lead to significant reductions in both size and cost of high power laser systems. Chirped laser pulse amplification through RBS could be an effective way to transfer energy from a long pump pulse to a resonant counter propagating short probe pulse. The probe pulse is spectrally broadened in a controlled manner through self-phase modulation. Mechanism of chirped pulse Raman amplification has been studied, and features of supperradiant growth associated with the nonlinear stage are observed in the linear regime. Gain measurements are briefly summarized. The experimental measurements are in qualitative agreement with simulations and theoretical predictions.

Electron beam pointing stability of a laser wakefield accelerator

Electron acceleration using plasma waves driven by ultra-short relativistic intensity laser pulses has undoubtedly excellent potential for driving a compact light source. However, for a wakefield accelerator to become a useful and reliable compact accelerator the beam properties need to meet a minimum standard. To demonstrate the feasibility of a wakefield based radiation source we have reliably produced electron beams with energies of 82±5 MeV, with 1±0.2% energy spread and 3 mrad r.m.s. divergence using a 0.9 J, 35 fs 800 nm laser. Reproducible beam pointing is essential for transporting the beam along the electron beam line. We find experimentally that electrons are accelerated close to the laser axis at low plasma densities. However, at plasma densities in excess of 1019 cm-3, electron beams have an elliptical beam profile with the major axis of the ellipse rotated with respect to the direction of polarization of the laser.

Laser amplifier based on Raman amplification in plasma (Conference Presentation)

The increasing demand for high laser powers is placing huge demands on current laser technology. This is now reaching a limit, and to realise the existing new areas of research promised at high intensities, new cost-effective and technically feasible ways of scaling up the laser power will be required. Plasma-based laser amplifiers may represent the required breakthrough to reach powers of tens of petawatt to exawatt, because of the fundamental advantage that amplification and compression can be realised simultaneously in a plasma medium, which is also robust and resistant to damage, unlike conventional amplifying media. Raman amplification is a promising method, where a long pump pulse transfers energy to a lower frequency, short duration counter-propagating seed pulse through resonant excitation of a plasma wave that creates a transient plasma echelon that backscatters the pump into the probe. Here we present the results of an experimental campaign conducted at the Central Laser Facility. Pump pulses with energies up to 100 J have been used to amplify sub-nanojoule seed pulses to near-joule level. An unprecedented gain of eight orders of magnitude, with a gain coefficient of 180 cm−1 has been measured, which exceeds high-power solid-state amplifying media by orders of magnitude. High gain leads to strong competing amplification from noise, which reaches similar levels to the amplified seed. The observation of 640 Jsr−1 directly backscattered from noise, implies potential overall efficiencies greater than 10%.

Wavebreaking as a limit for Raman amplification

The influence of wavebreaking on Raman amplification is investigated. A phenomenological modification is added to a set of slowly varying envelope equations, and found to give good agreement to particle-in-cell simulations for cold plasma in the wavebreaking regime. For warm plasma, good agreement is not found using the warm wavebreaking limit. However, the PIC simulations show that the decreased wavebreaking limit does have a significant impact on amplification. The limitations of our model are discussed, and possible future work outlined.