Transient plasma mirror/filter manipulates high-energy laser pulses
The scientific community invests tremendous effort in developing optical components such as lenses, mirrors, gratings, coatings, optical fibers, and even specialized photonic crystals that can withstand and manipulate high-energy laser pulses. But researchers at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (Germany) have now used counterpropagating laser pulses to generate transient plasma structures that can act as photonic-crystal cavities to manipulate high-energy laser pulses in ways that no solid optical materials can.
Rather than constructing a conventional photonic crystal through layers of dielectrics or metals, the researchers used oppositely propagating laser beams to generate a transient plasma photonic crystal (TPPC) by creating arrays of periodic microplasmas. This density grating has a specific bandgap as dictated by Maxwell-Vlasov simulations that affects the mode profile of laser light entering the TPPC just as if the laser were entering a physical mirror or filter structure. Unlike typical silica optical components that have laser-damage thresholds on the order of 10 J/cm2 for femtosecond to picosecond pulse durations, the TPPC structures can handle fluence values more than five orders of magnitude larger. Reference: G. Lehmann and K. H. Spatschek, Phys. Rev. Lett., 116, 22, 225002 (Jun. 3, 2016).
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.