Tunable Relativistic Infrared Pulses from Laser-produced Wakes in Tailored Plasma Structures
Abstract
The development of intense few-cycle mid-infrared (mid-IR, λ<5 μm) laser sources has made significant progress during the past decade, which has opened many opportunities for infrared nonlinear optics, high-harmonic generation and pump-probe experiments in the ``molecular fingerprint'' region. However, even longer carrier wavelength ( 10 μm) are needed in many applications. It is one of the current challenges facing ultrafast laser technology to generate high-energy, ultra-short long-wave IR (LWIR) pulses, beyond the capability of existing methods. Recently, a new scheme that utilizes asymmetric self-phase modulation (SPM) in a tailored plasma density structure to generate multi-millijoule energy, single-cycle LWIR pulses tunable in a wide spectral range was proposed. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this novel scheme for the first time. An intense single-cycle IR pulse with a central wavelength of 9.4 μm and energy of 3.4 mJ is generated using a 580 mJ, 36 fs, 810 nm drive laser. Furthermore, the tunability of the IR wavelength in the range of 3-20 μm is also demonstrated through simple adjustment of the plasma structure.
- Publication:
-
APS Division of Plasma Physics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019APS..DPPBO6013N