Relativistic flying forcibly oscillating reflective diffraction grating.

Mu, Jie; Esirkepov, Timur Zh; Valenta, Petr; Gu, Yanjun; Jeong, Tae Moon; Pirozhkov, Alexander S; Koga, James K; Kando, Masaki et al. · Phys Rev E · 2020

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Relativistic flying forcibly oscillating reflective diffraction gratings are formed by an intense laser pulse (driver) in plasma. The mirror surface is an electron density singularity near the joining area of the wake wave cavity and the bow wave; it moves together with the driver laser pulse and undergoes forced oscillations induced by the field. A counterpropagating weak laser pulse (source) is incident at grazing angles, being efficiently reflected and enriched by harmonics. The reflected spectrum consists of the source pulse base frequency and its harmonics, multiplied by a large factor due to the double Doppler effect.