Development and applications of compact high-intensity lasers

Abstract

The development of compact high‐intensity lasers, made possible by the technique of chirped pulse amplification, is reviewed. This includes the complexities of high‐power laser implementation, such as the generation of short pulses, pulse cleaning, wide‐bandwidth amplification, temporal stretching and compression, and the requirements for high‐average powers. Details of specific solid‐state laser systems are given. Some applications of these lasers to short‐pulse coherent short‐wavelength [x‐ray ultraviolet (XUV)] sources are also reviewed. This includes several nonlinear effects observed by focusing a subpicosecond laser into a gas; namely, an anomalous scaling of harmonic generation in atomic media, an upper limit on the conversion efficiency of relativistic harmonics in a plasma, and the observation of short‐pulse self‐focusing and multifoci formation. Finally, the effects of large ponderomotive pressures (100 Mbars) in short‐pulse high‐intensity laser–plasma interactions are discussed, with relevance both to recombination x‐ray lasers and a novel method of igniting thermonuclear fusion