Speaker
Martin Matys
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P4.2031.pdf
Simulation studies on transmissivity of silicon nitride plasma shutter for
laser pulse contrast enhancement
M. Matys1,2 , O. Klimo1,2 , J. Psikal1,2
1 FNSPE, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
2 ELI-Beamlines project, Institute of Physics, AS CR, Prague, Czech Republic
Tightly focused petawatt laser pulse is usually accompanied by low-energy prepulses, com-
posed of Amplified Spontaneous Emission part and picosecond pedestal [1]. These prepulses
can cause ionization and heating of the target and consequently create a low density preplasma
[2] before the main pulse arrive. Mitigation of these effects, i.e., increasing the laser pulse con-
trast, is beneficial for several application, e.g, Radiation Pressure Acceleration in the light sail
regime [3], High Harmonic Generation in the relativistic regime [4] or use of nanostructures on
the target [5]. Prepulses can be reduced either by reflecting plasma media [6] or by transmitting
plasma media, so-called plasma shutter [7].
In this work we study the utilisation of silicon nitride target as a plasma shutter for laser pulse
contrast enhancement in the sub picosecond time domain with realistic parameters with the help
of numerical 2D3V particle-in-cell simulations [8]. We focus on the dependence of the laser
pulse transmission through the shutter on its thickness, the properties of the transmitted pulse
(pulse shape, spectrum) and the effects of preplasma located on the front side of the shutter.
When the laser pulse burns through the shutter focusing of the transmitted pulse is observed.
Using thin shutter targets (less 40 nm thickness) more than 5% of energy of a petawatt class
laser beam is transmitted, with transmissivity of 35% in the case of 20 nm target.
Our work is supported by Czech Science Foundation project 18-09560S.
References
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[2] F. Wagner, S. Bedacht, A. Ortner et al, Optics Express 22, (2014)
[3] B. Qiao, S. Kar, M. Geissler et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 029901 (2012)
[4] F. Dollar, P. Cummings, V. Chvykov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 175002 (2013)
[5] D. Margarone, O. Klimo, I. J. Kim et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 234801 (2012)
[6] A. Levy, T. Ceccotti, P. D’Oliveira et al., Optics Letters 32, 3 (2007)
[7] S. Palaniyappan, B. M. Hegelich, H. Wu et al., Nature Physics 8, (2012)
[8] T. D. Arber, K. Bennett, C. S. Brady et al., Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 57, 113001 (2015)
