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Self-Guiding of Ultrashort, Relativistically Intense Laser Pulses through Underdense Plasmas in the Blowout Regime

2009; American Physical Society; Volume: 102; Issue: 17 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.102.175003

1092-0145

J. E. Ralph, K. A. Marsh, A. Pak, W. Lu, C. E. Clayton, F. Fang, W. B. Mori, C. Joshi,

Laser-induced spectroscopy and plasma

The self-guiding of relativistically intense but ultrashort laser pulses has been experimentally investigated as a function of laser power, plasma density, and plasma length in the blowout regime. The extent of self-guiding, observed by imaging the plasma exit, is shown to be limited by nonlinear pump depletion with observed self-guiding of over tens of Rayleigh lengths. Spectrally resolved images of the plasma exit show evidence consistent with self-guiding in the plasma wake. Minimal losses of the self-guided pulse resulted when the initial spot size was matched to the blowout radius.