Photon frequency up-shifting by an amplified plasma density wake due to two co-propagating laser pulses

Raj, Gaurav and Islam, M. R. and Ersfeld, B. and Jaroszynski, D. A.; Jaroszynski, DA and Rousse, A, eds. (2009) Photon frequency up-shifting by an amplified plasma density wake due to two co-propagating laser pulses. In: Conference on Harnessing Relativistic Plasma Waves as Novel Radiation Sources From Terahertz to X-Rays and Beyond, 2009-04-21 - 2009-04-23. (https://doi.org/10.1117/12.820959)

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Abstract

An analytical study of significant photon acceleration (frequency up-shift) in a plasma density wake produced by two laser pulses in the mildly relativistic and linearized regime is presented. The wake amplitude is amplified and its phase controlled using two coaxially, co-propagating laser pulses, which are considered to be identical but separated by a fixed time. A third probe pulse, with a variable delay, is considered as ``test particle'' or quasi-photon propagating through the amplified density wake, which experiences significant photon acceleration because of the local temporal and spatial variation of the permittivity. The evolution of the ``photon'' is studied using Hamiltonian theory. The significant frequency up-shift is much larger than that produced by the wake of a single relativistic laser pulse in the highly relativistic nonlinear wake regime. Our study demonstrates that the inter-pulse separation between the ``controlling'' pulse and the ``driver'' pulse, producing the amplified density wake, can provide an additional degree of freedom for tuning the maximum up-shift of the probe photon frequency.

ORCID iDs

Raj, Gaurav, Islam, M. R., Ersfeld, B. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5597-9429 and Jaroszynski, D. A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3006-5492; Jaroszynski, DA ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3006-5492 and Rousse, A