Photon deceleration in plasma wakes generates single-cycle relativistic tunable infrared pulses
Nature Communications 11, 2787 (2020)
Zan Nie, Chih-Hao Pai, Jie Zhang, Xiaonan Ning, Jianfei Hua, Yunxiao He, Yipeng Wu, Qianqian Su, Shuang Liu, Yue Ma, Zhi Cheng, Wei Lu, Hsu-Hsin Chu, Jyhpyng Wang, Chaojie Zhang, Warren B. Mori, and Chan Joshi
Photon deceleration in plasma wakes generates single-cycle relativistic tunable infrared pulses
Availability of relativistically intense, single-cycle, tunable infrared sources will open up new areas of relativistic nonlinear optics of plasmas, impulse IR spectroscopy and pump-probe experiments in the molecular fingerprint region. However, generation of such pulses is still a challenge by current methods. Recently, it has been proposed that time dependent refractive index associated with laser-produced nonlinear wakes in a suitably designed plasma density structure rapidly frequency down-converts photons. The longest wavelength photons slip backwards relative to the evolving laser pulse to form a single-cycle pulse within the nearly evacuated wake cavity. This process is called photon deceleration. Here, we demonstrate this scheme for generating high-power (~100 GW), near single-cycle, wavelength tunable (3–20 μm), infrared pulses using an 810 nm drive laser by tuning the density profile of the plasma. We also demonstrate that these pulses can be used to in-situ probe the transient and nonlinear wakes themselves.