Experimental investigation of chirp pulse Raman amplification in plasma

Yang, Xue and Vieux, Gregory and Brunetti, Enrico and Farmer, John Patrick and Ersfeld, Bernhard and Wiggins, Mark and Issac, Riju and Welsh, Gregor H. and Jaroszynski, Dino (2011) Experimental investigation of chirp pulse Raman amplification in plasma. [Proceedings Paper]

Abstract

Raman backscattering (RBS) in plasma has been proposed as a way of amplifying and compressing high intensity laser pulses for more than a decade. Not like the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser system, in which the laser intensity is limited by the damage threshold of conventional media, plasma is capable of tolerating ultrahigh laser intensities, together with RBS which is enable to transfer laser energy efficiently from a higher frequency pulse to a lower one, this scheme opens a scenario of the next generation of laser amplifiers. Experimental investigation has been carried out with a long (250 ps) pump pulse and a counter-propagating short (70 fs) probe pulse interacting in an under-dense preformed capillary plasma channel. Energy transfer from the pump pulse to the probe was observed. The guiding property was studied and the energy gain dependence of pump and probe energy were recorded.

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