Note: Low density and long plasma channels generated by laser transversely ignited ablative capillary discharges.
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.
Liu
Mingwei
M
State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China.
Deng
Aihua
A
Liu
Jiansheng
J
Li
Ruxin
R
Xu
Jiancai
J
Xia
Changquan
C
Wang
Cheng
C
Shen
Baifei
B
Xu
Zhizhan
Z
Nakajima
K
K