Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27283369.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11893 and PMC identifier 4906397.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Optical modulators can have high modulation speed and broad bandwidth, while being compact. However, these optical modulators usually work for low-intensity light beams. Here we present an ultrafast, plasma-based optical modulator, which can directly modulate high-power lasers with intensity up to 10(16) W cm(-2) to produce an extremely broad spectrum with a fractional bandwidth over 100%, extending to the mid-infrared regime in the low-frequency side. This concept relies on two co-propagating laser pulses in a sub-millimetre-scale underdense plasma, where a drive laser pulse first excites an electron plasma wave in its wake while a following carrier laser pulse is modulated by the plasma wave. The laser and plasma parameters suitable for the modulator to work are based on numerical simulations.