Plasma lenses for ultrashort multi-petawatt laser pulses

TL;DR

This paper investigates the limitations and potential of plasma lenses for focusing ultrashort, multi-petawatt laser pulses, highlighting nonlinear effects and power thresholds affecting their performance.

Contribution

It analyzes nonlinear and time-dependent effects in plasma lens focusing of ultrashort pulses, identifying power limits and aberrations that influence their effectiveness.

Findings

Plasma lenses can focus 30 fs pulses up to ~1 PW.

Performance degrades beyond ~1 PW, with penalties at ~10 PW.

Nonlinear effects cause chromatic and phase aberrations.

Abstract

An ideal plasma lens can provide the focusing power of a small f-number, solid-state focusing optic at a fraction of the diameter. An ideal plasma lens, however, relies on a steady-state, linear laser pulse-plasma interaction. Ultrashort multi-petawatt (MPW) pulses possess broad bandwidths and extreme intensities, and, as a result, their interaction with the plasma lens is neither steady state nor linear. Here we examine nonlinear and time-dependent modifications to plasma lens focusing, and show that these result in chromatic and phase aberrations and amplitude distortion. We find that a plasma lens can provide enhanced focusing for 30 fs pulses with peak power up to ~1 PW. The performance degrades through the MPW regime, until finally a focusing penalty is incurred at ~10 PW.