QUANTUM ELECTRONICS

EXPERIMENTS WITH COUNTER-PROPAGATING LASER PULSES AT RELATIVISTIC INTENSITIES

B. Liesfeld, J. Bernhardt, K.-U. Amthor, H. Schwoerer, and R. Sauerbrey

In recent years ultra-high laser intensities above the relativistic threshold of I 1018 W/cm2 have become readily available through table-top laser systems. Focusing such laser pulses onto a bulk target or into a gas-jet induces the acceleration of charged particles to relativistic energies which in turn can be used to generate bremsstrahlung and induce nuclear reactions [1, 2]. The careful selection of experimental parameters even allows for the generation of quasi-monoenergetic particle beams [3, 4, 5]. The physical principles involved in the acceleration processes have been, however, not yet completely understood. The measurement of the energy spectrum of the accelerated particles, for example, always takes place at a distance from the interaction region outside the laser plasma. Additionally, commonly used spectrometers rely on covering a small solid angle and therefore neglect the complex relation between energy spectrum and direction of propagation as well as propagation effects due to Coulomb repulsion. In order to gain a more accurate insight in the acceleration processes it is therefore imperative to develop the diagnostic means to probe the accelerated particles in the plasma during the interaction. We present an experimental scheme for the precise spatial and temporal overlap of two counter-propagating relativistic laser pulses. This scheme enables us to generate a laser-accelerated particle beam with one pulse and probing the laser-matter interaction with the second pulse. In the case of a gas-jet the Thomson backscattered signal may reveal information about the energy distribution of the electrons in the plasma since the photon energy of photons scattered under an angle of 180 is given by h = 4 2h where is the laser frequency, ? the Lorentz factor of the accelerated electrons and the frequency of the backscattered photons. Apart from plasma diagnostics our experimental setup provides the means for a variety of applications. In a first experiment we demonstrate the first accurate measurement of the laser pulse length at full intensity. The classical method to determine laser intensities comprises the simultaneous, careful measurement of pulse energy E , pulse duration L and focus area A , and the calculation of laser intensity according to I E L A . The experimental determination of each of the parameters entering this equation is, however, difficult at high laser intensities. For example, classical autocorrelation techniques or phase resolved methods for the determination of the pulse duration such as SPIDER or FROG require the use of non-linear optical materials. Even at intensities many orders of magnitude below the relativistic limit these materials are destroyed by the laser pulse. Therefore the pulse duration is usually measured at low intensities, frequently using only part of the laser beam, and then extrapolated to the experimentally relevant intensity range. It is therefore of interest to utilize a genuinely relativistic effect, that is well understood theoretically, for the determination of laser pulse parameters at

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the experimental setup for two colliding laser pulses: The main laser pulse is divided into two pulses of equal energy by a beamsplitter which may be moved along the zdirection. Each pulse is focused into a He gas-jet by a 45 off-axis parabolic mirror. A synchronized, frequency-doubled probe beam of variable delay is used for shadowgraphy of the interaction region. The 2? self-emission of the plasma as well as shadow images are observed under 84 with respect to the z-axis (angle in the figure is exaggerated for clarity).

relativistic intensities. Such an effect is non-linear Thomson scattering of light from free electrons [6, 7, 8]. Experimental setup: The laser pulse is divided by a 50% beam splitter of 2.5 mm thickness into two pulses of equal energy (see Fig. 1). Each of the linearly polarized pulses is focused by an f/2 parabolic mirror into a pulsed He gas-jet. The complete setup is located in a vacuum chamber and is fully computer controlled. The beam splitter may be moved in z-direction (axes indicated in Fig. 1) to adjust the temporal delay of the laser pulses. Both parabolic mirrors may be tilted around two axes and translated in three dimensions. This allows for precise focusing and spatial overlap of the two foci. The counter-propagating laser pulses are overlapped in space and time in a gas-jet that is so dilute (maximum gas density 1017 cm- 3 at the focus position) that propagation effects by ionization may be neglected. The total phase change accumulated by the laser pulse is estimated to be < 1. The electrons generated early in the laser pulse by ionization are driven by both the electric and the magnetic field of the electromagnetic wave in such a way that Thomson scattered light close to the second harmonic of the laser frequency is generated. The observation of the second harmonic signal is spatially resolved in laser propagation direction (z-axis) and yields information on the spatial overlap of the laser pulses in the focal regions of the two parabolic mirrors. The signal also represents an autocorrelation trace of the laser pulse of second order at full intensity. In order to analyze the observed signals quantitatively the non-linear Thomson scattered signal at the second harmonic of the laser frequency was calculated. For an intensity of I 3 1018 W/cm2 in each beam used for this experiment the relativistic parameter is given by a0 = eE0 m c 1.2 . Here e is the elementary charge,
2

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E0 = 5 1012 V/m is the electric field in each of the pulses, m is the mass of the electron,

c the speed of light, and the frequency of the laser fundamental. For a0 < 2 the equation of motion for an electron moving in the electromagnetic wave [9, 8] may be solved by perturbation theory, and it may be shown that the radiated non-linear Thomson signal at the second harmonic is a non-linear optical effect of second order. Although a complete theory of nonlinear Thomson scattering is available [6, 8] we use the approximate treatment in order to stress the analogy to well known second-order autocorrelation techniques [10]. Evaluating the non-linear Thomson signal expected to arise from the overlap of two Gaussian beams and averaging over interference terms one arrives at ( 1) Here I 0 L and I 0 R are the intensities in the beams impinging from the left and the right, respectively, z0 is the confocal parameter of the Gaussian beam and the 1/eduration of the Gaussian envelope of the electric field pulse. is related to the laser intensity pulse duration at FWHM by L = 2 ln 2 . The focus of the pulse propagating from right to left is located at z = z1 and is delayed with respect to I L by . For plane waves ( z0 ), a common focus of the two beams ( z1 = 0 ) and equal intensities from the left and the right ( I 0 L = I 0 R ) Eq. 1 reduces to the well known intensity autocorrelation signal of second order [10].

Fig. 2: a) Counterpropagating laser pulses with identical foci. b) Non-linear Thomson signal obtained for two counterpropagating laser pulses with identical foci. The black experimental data was measured for zero delay ( = 0 ), while the blue and red signals correspond to a delay of 66 fs, respectively. The straight lines were obtained by carrying out a non-linear curve fit to the experimental data according to Eq. 1. For better visibility the data at non-zero delay was scaled by a factor of two (left scale) in respect to the data at zero delay (right scale) 3

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pulse duration we obtain L= (112 11) fs and for z 0 = (9 1) m. The value of the pulse duration is slightly larger than the value of L= (84 5) fs measured at lower intensity

Fig. 2b shows experimental results obtained for z1 = 0 compared with calculated curves based on Eq. (1). Excellent agreement between the experimentally determined signals and the fitted curves of Eq. 1 are obtained for both the signal with zero delay ( = 0 ) as well as the two signals with a delay of 66 fs, respectively. The pulse duration L and the confocal parameter z0 were obtained for the fitted curves. For the

by a third-order autocorrelator. The increase may be explained by a slight tilt of the wavefront of 1 which corresponds to the detection limit of our wavefront interferometer. In conclusion, we demonstrated the feasibility of overlapping two relativistic laser pulses in space and time. For the first time a single-shot autocorrelation was carried out at relativistic intensities exactly under conditions present in high-intensity experiments. Future prospects comprise the Thomson backscattering of photons from laseraccelerated electrons, head on collision of relativistic laser-accelerated particle beams and ultimately experiments aimed at the generation of particle-anti-particle pairs from photons only.

[1] Schwoerer, H., Ewald, F., Sauerbrey, R., et al. Fission of actinides using a tabletop laser. Europhysics Letters 61(1), 4752 (2003). [2] Liesfeld, B., Amthor, K.-U., Ewald, F., et al. Nuclear reactions triggered by laseraccelerated relativistic electron jets. Applied Physics B 79(8), 10471052 (2004). [3] Geddes, C. G. R., Toth, C., Tilborg, J. v., et al. High-quality electron beams from a laser wakefield accelerator using plasma-channel guiding. Nature 431(7008), 538 541 (2004). [4] Faure, J., Glinec, Y., Pukhov, A., et al. A laser-plasma accelerator producing monoenergetic electron beams. Nature 431(7008), 541544 (2004). [5] Mangles, S. P. D., Murphy, C. D., Najmudin, Z., et al. Monoenergetic beams of relativistic electrons from intense laser-plasma interactions. Nature 431(7008), 535538 (2004). [6] Esarey, E., Ride, S. K., and Sprangle, P. Nonlinear thomson scattering of intense laser-pulses from beams and plasmas. Physical Review E 48(4), 30033021 (1993). [7] Chen, S. Y., Maksimchuk, A., and Umstadter, D. Experimental observation of relativistic nonlinear thomson scattering. Nature 396(6712), 653655 (1998). [8] Lau, Y. Y., He, F., Umstadter, D. P., et al. Nonlinear thomson scattering: A tutorial. Physics of Plasmas 10(5), 21552162 (2003). [9] Sarachik, E. S. and Schappert, G. T. Classical theory of scattering of intense laser radiation by free electrons. Physical Review D 1(10), 27382753 (1970). [10] Feurer, T. and Sauerbrey, R. Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (Academic Press), vol. 29C, chap. 7, pages 193227 (1997).