Formation of Optical Bullets in Laser‐Driven Plasma Bubble Accelerators

Dong, Peng and Reed, S. A. and Yi, S. A. and Kalmykov, S. Y. and Shvets, G. and Matlis, N. H. and McGuffey, C. and Bulanov, S. S. and Chvykov, Vladimir and Kalintchenko, Galina and Krushelnick, Karl and Maksimchuk, Anatoly and Matsuoka, Takeshi and Thomas, Alexander George Roy and Yanovsky, Victor and Downer, M. C. (2010) Formation of Optical Bullets in Laser‐Driven Plasma Bubble Accelerators. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1299 (1). pp. 171-173. ISSN 0094-243X

Abstract

Electron density bubbles generated in plasma of density ne∼1019/cm3ne∼1019/cm3 are shown to reshape copropagating probe pulses into optical “bullets.” The bullets, reconstructed by frequency‐domain interferometric techniques, are used to visualize bubble formation independently of relativistic electron generation.