Excellence in Research: Seeding Stimulated Raman Backscattering with Intense and Ultra-Intense Laser Pulses

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Achieving high peak intensity and extreme power of laser pulses stands on the leading edge of laser developments. The continued scaling of lasers to increase power will soon reach the limits dictated by the damage threshold of solid state materials; plasmas can provide an alternative laser gain medium, potentially allowing laser power to reach extraordinary levels. This project provides a simulation-driven discovery and experimental verification platform to achieve the next level of high laser intensity using plasma as the amplification medium. This represents a new advance in decade-long research efforts to understand the rich physics behind laser-plasma processes and the production of high-power, ultra-short laser pulses. This project will contribute to increasing the research capacity of Delaware State University (DSU) in STEM and will help to build the core infrastructure in research at the interface of ultrafast science and plasma physics at DSU. The multi-disciplinary nature of the project, involving laser physics and engineering, plasma physics, and computational physics, will bring unique education and training opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students from under-served communities. The collaborations within DSU and other institutions will also offer the students a chance to work with world-class scientists.The goal of this project is to develop a solid theoretical understanding and to simulate and test the robustness of a Stimulated Raman Back Scattering (SRBS) scheme in plasma, through which a coherent, ultrashort, ultra-intense laser pulse is generated in a plasma channel. This SRBS scheme aims to overcome the saturation barrier faced in previous efforts, which limits the conversion efficiency and the maximum amplified seed energy. Using simulations as the guide, the full capacity of the scheme and the physical mechanisms in the scheme will be revealed and explored. Experimentally, the scheme will be investigated in detail using intense and ultra-intense input seed pulses. The amplification and compression of the ultra-intense pulse provides exciting and new phenomena in ultrafast and plasma science research. The generated ultrashort, ultra-intense SRBS pulse will open up new and unique opportunities for generating atto-second pulses, and water-window x-ray lasers. The work will be carried out through integrated group efforts of theory, computation, and experiment relying on joint expertise from Delaware State University and partners at Princeton University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This project is managed by the Division of Physics and jointly funded by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Excellence in Research Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.