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Generating nearly single-cycle pulses with increased intensity and strongly asymmetric pulses of petawatt level

Inhyuk Nam¹, Victor V. Kulagin^2,*, Min Sup Hur³, In Won Lee⁴, and Hyyong Suk^1,4,†

¹Department of Photonics and Applied Physics, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712, Korea
²Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Moscow 119992, Russia
³School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan 689-798, Korea
⁴Advanced Photonics Research Institute, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712, Korea

^*victorvkulagin@yandex.ru
^†hysuk@gist.ac.kr

Phys. Rev. E 85, 026405 – Published 16 February, 2012

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.026405

Abstract

Generation of petawatt-class pulses with a nearly single-cycle duration or with a strongly asymmetric longitudinal profile using a thin plasma layer are investigated via particle-in-cell simulations and the analytical flying mirror model. It is shown that the transmitted pulses having a duration as short as about 4 fs (1.2 laser cycles) or one-cycle front (tail) asymmetric pulses with peak intensity of about $10^{21} W / {cm}^{2}$ can be produced by optimizing system parameters. Here, a new effect is found for the shaping of linearly polarized laser pulses, owing to which the peak amplitude of the transmitted pulse becomes larger than that of the incoming pulse, and intense harmonics are generated. Characteristics of the transmitting window are then studied for different parameters of laser pulse and plasma layer. For a circular polarization, it is shown that the flying mirror model developed for shaping laser pulses with ultrathin foils can be successfully applied to plasma layers having a thickness of about the laser wavelength, which allows the shape of the transmitted pulse to be analytically predicted.

Article Text

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