Streeter, M. J. V. and Kneip, S. and Bloom, M. S. and Bendoyro, R. A. and Chekhlov, O. and Dangor, A. E. and Döpp, A. and Hooker, C. J. and Holloway, J. and Jiang, J. and Lopes, N. C. and Nakamura, H. and Norreys, P. A. and Palmer, C. A. J. and Rajeev, P. P. and Schreiber, J. and Symes, D. R. and Wing, M. and Mangles, S. P. D. and Najmudin, Z. (2018) Observation of laser power amplification in a self-injecting laser wakefield accelerator. Physical review letters, 120 (25): 254801. ISSN 1079-7114
observation_laser_power.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.
Download (1MB)
Abstract
We report on the depletion and power amplification of the driving laser pulse in a strongly-driven laser wakefield accelerator. Simultaneous measurement of the transmitted pulse energy and temporal shape indicate an increase in peak power from $187 \pm 11$TW to a maximum of $318 \pm 12$ TW after 13 mm of propagation in plasma density of $0.9 \times 10^{18}$ cm$^{-3}$. The power amplification is correlated with the injection and acceleration of electrons in the non-linear wakefield. This process is modeled by including localized redshifting and subsequent group delay dispersion at the laser pulse front.