Professor Simon Hooker

Abstract:

We describe a new approach for driving GeV-scale plasma accelerators with long laser pulses. We show that the temporal phase of a long, high-energy driving laser pulse can be modulated periodically by copropagating it with a low-amplitude plasma wave driven by a short, low-energy seed pulse. Compression of the modulated driver by a dispersive optic generates a train of short pulses suitable for resonantly driving a plasma accelerator. Modulation of the driver occurs via well-controlled linear processes, as confirmed by good agreement between particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and an analytic model. PIC simulations demonstrate that a 1.7 J, 1 ps driver, and a 140 mJ, 40 fs seed pulse can accelerate electrons to energies of 0.65 GeV in a plasma channel with an axial density of 2.5 × 1017cm−3. This work opens a route to high repetition-rate, GeV-scale plasma accelerators driven by thin-disk lasers, which can provide joule-scale, picosecond-duration laser pulses at multikilohertz repetition rates and high wall-plug efficiencies.

Abstract:

The first demonstration of laser action in ruby was made in 1960 by T. H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories, USA. Many laboratories worldwide began the search for lasers using different materials, operating at different wavelengths. In the UK, academia, industry and the central laboratories took up the challenge from the earliest days to develop these systems for a broad range of applications. This historical review looks at the contribution the UK has made to the advancement of the technology, the development of systems and components and their exploitation over the last 60 years.