Short-Pulse High-Intensity Lasers and Applications II

Various papers on short-pulse high-intensity laser and applications are presented. Individual topics addressed include: chirped-pulse application experiments on the VULCAN Nd:glass laser facility, experimental demonstration of laser acceleration of electrons via relativistic plasma waves, defocusing effects of a terawatt laser in an underdense plasma, Brillouin scattering from fluctuations produced by stimulated Raman scattering, intense ultrashort-pulse laser-solid interactions for soft-X-ray generation, absorption and X-ray measurements for ultraintense laser-plasma interactions, femtosecond dynamics of short-scale-length laser plasmas, soft X-ray pulse length measurement by pump-probe absorption spectroscopy. Also discussed are: ultrafast X-ray emission from ultrashort plasmas, efficient K-alpha emission in high-contrast short-pulse laser-plasma interactions, demonstration designs for optical-field-ionized plasma X-ray laser, development of short-pulse soft X-ray lasers, inner-shell photoionized X-ray laser schemes, analysis of neon soft X-ray spectra from short-pulse laser-produced plasmas, high-order harmonic generation with short-pulse lasers, multiply charged ions produced in noble gases with a 1-ps laser pulse at 1053 nm, observation of nonsequential ionization of helium and its impact on intensity monitoring, high-intensity ultrasoft X-ray source.