Wang Zhao-Hua

The characteristics of confined ablation in laser propulsion

Compared with direct ablation, confined ablation provides an effective way to obtain a large target momentum and a high coupling coefficient. By using a transparent glass layer to cover the target surface, the coupling coefficient is enhanced by an order of magnitude. With the increase of the gap width between the target surface and the cover layer, the coupling coefficient exponentially decreases. It is found that the coupling coefficient is also related to the thickness of the cover layer.

Effects of Confined Laser Ablation on Laser Plasma Propulsion

We investigate the effects of confined laser ablation on laser plasma propulsion. Compared with planar ablation, the cavity ablation provides an effective way to obtain a large target momentum and a high coupling coefficient. When laser pulses are focused into a cavity with 1 mm diameter and 2 mm depth, a high coupling coefficient is obtained. By using a glass layer to cover the cavity, the coupling coefficient is enhanced by 10 times. Meanwhile, it is found that with the increase of the target surface size, the target momentum presents a linear increase.

Generation of surface electrons in femtosecond laser-solid interactions

The characteristics of hot electrons produced by p-polarized femtosecond laser-solid interactions are studied. The experimental results show that the outgoing electrons are mainly emitted in three directions: along the target surface, the normal direction and the laser backward direction. The electrons flowing along the target surface are due to the confinement of the electrostatic field and the surface magnetic field, while the electrons in the normal direction due to the resonant absorption.

Acoustic Diagnostics of Plasma Channels Induced by Intense Femtosecond Laser Pulses in Air

Long plasma channels induced by femtosecond laser pulses in air are diagnosed using the sonographic method. By detecting the sound signals along the channels, the length and the electron density of the channels are measured. Refocusing is also observed at different laser energies and different focal lengths. We find that the sonographic method has manifest advantages compared to other techniques.

Double Jet Emission of Hot Electrons from a Micro-droplet Spray

Spatial distribution of hot electrons with energies above 50 keV are investigated by an ethanol micro-droplet spray irradiated by linearly and elliptically polarized 150 fs laser pulses at an intensity of 1016W/cm2. Two symmetric hot electron jets with respect to the laser propagation direction are observed in the polarization plane for a linearly polarized laser field and in the plane of the long electric vector for an elliptically polarized laser field, respectively. Particle-in-cell simulations suggest that the resonance absorption on the spherical surface of the droplets is mainly responsible for the generation of the double-jet emission of hot electrons.

Generation of 54 Fs Laser Pulses from a Diode Pumped Kerr-Lens Mode-Locked Yb:LSO Laser *

A diode pumped Kerr-lens mode-locked femtosecond Yb:LSO laser is experimentally demonstrated for the first time. The 54 fs laser pulses at central wavelength of 1052 nm with a bandwidth of 22.5 nm are obtained at the repetition rate of 113 MHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the shortest pulse duration ever produced from the Yb-doped orthosilicates lasers family.

A Tunable Ultrafast Source by Sum-Frequency Generation between Two Actively Synchronized Ultrafast Lasers

We demonstrate an experimental setup of a tunable ultrafast laser source by sum-frequency generation (SFG) between a mode-locking Ti:sapphire laser and a Nd:YVO4 laser. The generated wavelength by SFG is tunable from 450 nm to 480 nm with timing jitter no more than 1 ps. The average output power is over 20 mW and the maximum is about 30 mW at 457 nm. This ultrafast laser is a simple and easy tuning source applied to some pump-probe spectroscopy and ultrafast dynamics experiments.

Demonstration of Mo Soft X-Ray Lasers with a Grazing Incidence Pumping Scheme in the XL-II Facility

A Ni-like Mo soft x-ray laser (SXRLs) operating at 18.9nm has been demonstrated by employing a grazing incidence pumping scheme with 120mJ in the 200ps pre-pulse and 140mJ in the 200fs main pulse. The SXRL gain is estimated to be 1.5–3cm−1 when a grazing incidence angle of 14° is applied. Numerical simulations are also performed to investigate the dynamics of the ion distribution. It is found that a high intensity at 2.4 × 1014 W/cm2 of the 200 fs main pulse could heat the pre-plasma rapidly to an appropriate temperature for population inversion, and could compensate for the shortage of the total pump energy to a certain extent.

Triggering and guiding of high voltage discharge by using femtosecond laser filaments with different parameters

This paper demonstrates the triggering and guiding of the stationary high voltage (HV) discharges at 5–40 kV by using plasma filaments generated by femtosecond laser pulses in air. A significant reduction of the breakdown voltage threshold due to the pre-ionization of the air gap by laser filamentation is observed. The discharge experiments are performed by using laser pulses with different energy from 15–60 mJ. The electron density of filaments is detected by sonography method. The influence of the electron density of laser filaments on the triggering and guiding HV discharge is experimentally investigated. The results have shown that the behaviour of plasma filaments can strongly affect the efficiency of triggering and guiding HV discharge.

Highly efficient and stable ring regenerative amplifier for chirped-pulse amplification at repetition rate 1 kHz

A novel reflected terahertz-emission microscopy is proposed and developed for improving the spatial resolution of THz imaging. When attaching a bow-tie antenna directly onto a thin generation crystal, the reflected THz waves can be collected and detected by a photoconductive antenna, and the spatial resolution is decided by the diameter of focused pump beam. In this way, the detected resolution can be largely improved and tunable. The configuration and characteristics of this microscopy are described in detail.