title: Note: Low density and long plasma channels generated by laser transversely ignited ablative capillary discharges.
abstract: A technique is developed to reduce the jitter associated with ablative capillary discharges. A laser pulse propagating perpendicularly to the axis of the capillary and focused onto a copper wire creates a plasma that initiates the discharge. This transverse laser ignition method has several advantages over previous techniques employing a laser pulse collinear with the capillary, including increased capillary lifetime and simpler arrangement of the igniting and the driving pulses for laser-wakefield acceleration. Using this technique long, low density plasma channels are produced with low jitter.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China.
authors.forename: Mingwei
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Aihua
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: Jiansheng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Ruxin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Jiancai
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Changquan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Baifei
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Zhizhan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nakajima