Amplification and generation of ultra-intense twisted laser pulses via stimulated Raman scattering
Open Access
- 28 January 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 7 (1), 10371
- https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10371
Abstract
Twisted Laguerre–Gaussian lasers, with orbital angular momentum and characterized by doughnut-shaped intensity profiles, provide a transformative set of tools and research directions in a growing range of fields and applications, from super-resolution microcopy and ultra-fast optical communications to quantum computing and astrophysics. The impact of twisted light is widening as recent numerical calculations provided solutions to long-standing challenges in plasma-based acceleration by allowing for high-gradient positron acceleration. The production of ultra-high-intensity twisted laser pulses could then also have a broad influence on relativistic laser–matter interactions. Here we show theoretically and with ab initio three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that stimulated Raman backscattering can generate and amplify twisted lasers to petawatt intensities in plasmas. This work may open new research directions in nonlinear optics and high–energy-density science, compact plasma-based accelerators and light sources.This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
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