Guiding of laser pulses in plasma channels created by the ignitor-heater technique

Experimental and theoretical investigations of laser guiding in plasma channels are reported. Intense (<5 X 10(17) W/cm(2)), short (75 fs) laser pulses have been injected and guided in channels produced using a novel ignitor-heater technique, which uses two laser pulses. The ignitor, an ultrashort (<100 fs) laser pulse, is brought to a line focus to ionize the gas jet. The heater pulse (160 ps long) is subsequently used to heat the existing spark via inverse Bremsstrahlung. The hydrodynamic shock expansion creates a channel. This technique allows the creation of slab or cylindrical channels in low atomic number gases, e. g., hydrogen. The channel profile was diagnosed with time resolved longitudinal interferometry. The effects of laser beam size and divergence mismatch at the channel entrance and leakage of the laser energy out of the channel are studied theoretically and experimentally in one and two transverse dimensions. An all-optical channel wake diagnostic based on Fourier domain interferometry is discussed, and a holographic-type inversion technique is proposed to increase the accuracy and reach of this method. [S1070-664X(99)97205-1].