High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Co-Editors-in-Chief
Colin Danson, Jianqiang Zhu
Contents 1 Issue (s), 7 Article (s)
Vol. 13, Iss.1—Jan.1, 2025 • pp: e1- Spec. pp:
Vol. 13, Iss.1-Jan..1,2025
Erratum
A scintillating fiber imaging spectrometer for active characterization of laser-driven proton beams – ERRATUM
J. K. Patel, C. D. Armstrong, R. Wilson, M. Alderton, E. J. Dolier, T. P. Frazer, A. Horne, A. Lofrese, M. Peat, M. Woodward, B. Zielbauer, R. J. Clarke, R. Deas, P. P. Rajeev, R. J. Gray, and P. McKenna

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Mar. 03, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e6 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Perspective
Towards a vacuum birefringence experiment at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (Letter of Intent of the BIREF@HIBEF Collaboration)
N. Ahmadiniaz, C. Bähtz, A. Benediktovitch, C. Bömer, L. Bocklage, T. E. Cowan, J. Edwards, S. Evans, S. Franchino Viñas, H. Gies, S. Göde, J. Görs, J. Grenzer, U. Hernandez Acosta, T. Heinzl, P. Hilz, W. Hippler, L. G. Huang, O. Humphries, F. Karbstein, P. Khademi, B. King, T. Kluge, C. Kohlfürst, D. Krebs, A. Laso-García, R. Lötzsch, A. J. Macleod, B. Marx-Glowna, E. A. Mosman, M. Nakatsutsumi, G. G. Paulus, S. V. Rahul, L. Randolph, R. Röhlsberger, N. Rohringer, A. Sävert, S. Sadashivaiah, R. Sauerbrey, H.-P. Schlenviogt, S. M. Schmidt, U. Schramm, R. Schützhold, J.-P. Schwinkendorf, D. Seipt, M. Šmíd, T. Stöhlker, T. Toncian, M. Valialshchikov, A. Wipf, U. Zastrau, and M. Zepf

Quantum field theory predicts a nonlinear response of the vacuum to strong electromagnetic fields of macroscopic extent. This fundamental tenet has remained experimentally challenging and is yet to be tested in the laboratory. A particularly distinct signature of the resulting optical activity of the quantum vacuum is vacuum birefringence. This offers an excellent opportunity for a precision test of nonlinear quantum electrodynamics in an uncharted parameter regime. Recently, the operation of the high-intensity Relativistic Laser at the X-ray Free Electron Laser provided by the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields has been inaugurated at the High Energy Density scientific instrument of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser. We make the case that this worldwide unique combination of an X-ray free-electron laser and an ultra-intense near-infrared laser together with recent advances in high-precision X-ray polarimetry, refinements of prospective discovery scenarios and progress in their accurate theoretical modelling have set the stage for performing an actual discovery experiment of quantum vacuum nonlinearity.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Mar. 12, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e7 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Research Articles
Manipulating energy mergence of ultraintense femtosecond laser beamlets in underdense plasmas
Huanwen Chen, Wenxing Yu, Xinrong Xu, Jinlong Jiao, Yuqing Wei, Xiangrui Jiang, Yan Yin, Tongpu Yu, Hongbin Zhuo, and Debin Zou

The propagation of multiple ultraintense femtosecond lasers in underdense plasmas is investigated theoretically and numerically. We find that the energy merging effect between two in-phase seed lasers can be improved by using two obliquely incident guiding lasers whose initial phase is $\pi$ and $\pi /2$ ahead of the seed laser. Particle-in-cell simulations show that due to the repulsion and energy transfer of the guiding laser, the peak intensity of the merged light is amplified by more than five times compared to the seed laser. The energy conversion efficiency from all incident lasers to the merged light is up to approximately 60 $\%$ . The results are useful for many applications, including plasma-based optical amplification, charged particle acceleration and extremely intense magnetic field generation.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Feb. 26, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e1 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Research Articles
Intense vortex-laser generation and phase detection by surface plasma holograms
Hao Zhang, Lingyu Zhang, Hongtao Huang, Jingyi Wang, Yuanjie Yang, Wenhui Tang, and Tongpu Yu

With the escalating laser peak power, modulating and detecting the intensity, duration, phase and polarization of ultra-intense laser pulses progressively becomes increasingly arduous due to the limited damage thresholds of conventional optical components. In particular, the generation and detection of ultra-intense vortex lasers pose great challenges for current laser technologies, which has limited the widely potential applications of relativistic vortex lasers in various domains. In this study, we propose to reconstruct the vortex phase and generate and amplify the relativistic vortex lasers via surface plasma holograms (SPHs). By interfering with the object laser and reference laser, SPHs are formed on the target and the phase of the interfering laser is imprinted through the modulation of surface plasma density. In particular, using the quadrature phase-shift interference, the vortex phase of the object laser can be well reconstructed. The generated vortex lasers can be focused and enhanced further by one order of magnitude, up to $1.7\times {10}^{21}$ W/cm ${}^2$ , which has been demonstrated by full three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. For the first time, we provide a practical way to detect the phase of relativistic vortex lasers, which can be applied in large 1–10 PW laser facilities. This will promote future experimental research of vortex-laser–plasma interaction and open a new avenue of plasma optics in the ultra-relativistic regime.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Feb. 26, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e2 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Research Articles
Advanced plasma target from pre-ionized low-density foam for effective and robust direct laser acceleration of electrons
Olga N. Rosmej, Mikhail Gyrdymov, Nikolay E. Andreev, Parysatis Tavana, Vyacheslav Popov, Nataliya G. Borisenko, Alexandr I. Gromov, Sergey Yu. Gus’kov, Rafael Yakhin, Galina A. Vegunova, Nikolai Bukharskii, Philipp Korneev, Jakub Cikhardt, Sero Zähter, Sebastian Busch, Joachim Jacoby, Vladimir G. Pimenov, Christian Spielmann, and Alexander Pukhov

Low-density polymer foams pre-ionized by a well-controlled nanosecond pulse are excellent plasma targets to trigger direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons by sub-picosecond relativistic laser pulses. In this work, the influence of the nanosecond pulse on the DLA process is investigated. The density profile of plasma generated after irradiating foam with a nanosecond pulse was simulated with a two-dimensional hydrodynamic code, which takes into account the high aspect ratio of interaction and the microstructure of polymer foams. The obtained plasma density profile was used as input to the three-dimensional particle-in-cell code to simulate energy, angular distributions and charge carried by the directional fraction of DLA electrons. The modelling shows good agreement with the experiment and in general a weak dependence of the electron spectra on the plasma profiles, which contain a density up-ramp and a region of near-critical electron density. This explains the high DLA stability in pre-ionized foams, which is important for applications.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Feb. 26, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e3 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Research Articles
Temporal characterization of ultrashort pulses via reflected four-wave mixing with perturbation on a solid surface
Jinhui Li, Keyang Liu, Hao Yuan, Xingguo Wang, Qiwen Zhen, Xianglin Wang, Yishan Wang, Wei Zhao, Huabao Cao, and Yuxi Fu

Time-domain characterization of ultrashort pulses is essential for studying interactions between light and matter. Here, we propose and demonstrate an all-optical pulse sampling technique based on reflected four-wave mixing with perturbation on a solid surface. In this method, a weak perturbation pulse perturbs the four-wave mixing signal generated by a strong fundamental pulse. The modulation signal of the four-wave mixing, which is detected in the reflection geometry to ensure a perfect phase-matching condition, directly reflects the temporal profile of the perturbation pulse. We successfully characterized multi-cycle and few-cycle pulses using this method. The reliability of our approach was verified by comparing it to the widely employed frequency-resolved optical gating method. This technique provides a simple and robust method for characterizing ultrashort laser pulses.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Mar. 12, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e8 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Research Articles
Interaction of a counter-propagating relativistic laser pair with subwavelength thin solid-density foil
Xiangrui Jiang, Debin Zou, Mingyang Yu, Kaiyuan Feng, Xiaohu Yang, Huanwen Chen, Lixiang Hu, Weiquan Wang, Guobo Zhang, Fuqiu Shao, Wenhui Tang, and Tongpu Yu

The effect of the polarizations of two counter-propagating relativistic laser pulses interacting with subwavelength thin solid-density foil is investigated. Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and analytical modelling show that the interaction and resulting transverse instability depend strongly on the polarization directions as well as the intensity distribution of the resultant light field in the foil. The left- and right-handed circularly polarized laser pair with the same phase at the common focal spot in the ultrathin foil leads to the strongest distortion of the foil. The fastest growing mode and maximum growth rate depend mainly on the laser intensity. For all polarization and phase-difference combinations, the instability is weakest when the two laser pulses are exactly out of phase at the common focusing point in the foil.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Mar. 12, 2025, Vol. 13 Issue 1 010000e9 (2025)
Get PDF
View fulltext
Topics regular articlesEditorialreviewReviewsLetters Special Issues
Special Issue on Femtosecond timing and synchronization at large scale facilities (2024)
Submission Open:21 May 2024; Submission Deadline: 15 September 2024
Editor (s): Anne-Laure Calendron, Jungwon Kim, Annika Eichler, Chengcheng Charlie Xu
Special Issue on Relativistic Laser Plasma Interaction (RLPI) Diagnostics and Instrumentation (2022)
Submission Open:1 June 2022; Submission Deadline: 31 December 2022
Editor (s): Joerg Schreiber, Rodrigo Lopez-Martens, Lieselotte Obst-Huebl, Jianhui Bin
Future Control Systems and Machine Learning at High Power Laser Facilities (2022)
Submission Open:1 March 2022; Submission Deadline: 30 October 2022
Editor (s): Andreas Döpp, Matthew Streeter, Scott Feister, Hyung Taek Kim, Charlotte Palmer
Special Issue on Inertial Confinement Fusion (2021)
Published
Editor (s): John Kline, Jianqiang Zhu, Leonida Gizzi, Robbie Scott
Special Issue on the 10th anniversary of High Power Laser Science and Engineering (2023)
Call for Papers
Editor (s): Colin Danson, Jianqiang Zhu, Michael Campbell
Top Downloads
High-energy laser facility PHELIX at GSI: latest advances and extended capabilities
High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol. 12, Issue 4, 04000e39 (2024)
High-efficiency tandem Ho:YAG single-crystal fiber laser delivering more than 100 W output power
High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol. 12, Issue 4, 04000e41 (2024)
High-repetition-rate and high-power efficient picosecond thin-disk regenerative amplifierAuthor Presentation
High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol. 12, Issue 2, 02000e14 (2024)
Exploring fs-laser irradiation damage subthreshold behavior of dielectric mirrors via electrical measurements
High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol. 12, Issue 2, 02000e15 (2024)
Please enter the answer below before you can view the full text.
9-6=
Submit