Session CO2 - Laser Accelerators; Ultraintense Laser Applications.
ORAL session, Monday afternoon, November 15
Room 203, SCC
We report generation of plasma waveguides in clustered gases using an axicon. The use of clustered media decouples pump-energy absorption from the mean gas density, and opens up a route to plasma densities lower than 10^18 cm^-3 in a hydrodynamic plasma waveguide. A 100 ps Nd:YAG laser was focused into clustered argon and nitrogen gas jets using an axicon to generate cm-long plasma waveguides. Side-pumping the channel avoids channel length limitations imposed by strong laser-energy absorption by the clustered medium; the length of the waveguides was limited by the size of the jet. Transverse interferometry was used to measure the evolution of the plasma density.