Home
AAC Photos
Abstracts
Proceedings
Presentation Instructions
AAC'04 Agenda
AAC'04 Poster
Organizing Committee
Workshop Working Groups

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Workshop Working Groups

Laser-Plasma Acceleration: Plasma Guiding Sub-Group
Group-Leader: Howard Milchberg, UMD (milch@ipst.umd.edu)
Co-Group-Leader: Carl Schroeder, LBNL (CBSchroeder@lbl.gov)

Optical guiding of intense laser pulses is critical for increasing laser-plasma interaction lengths in laser wakefield accelerators as well as for applications such as harmonic generation and x-ray lasers. Without some form of optical guiding the laser-plasma interaction distance will be limited to a few Rayleigh ranges owing to laser diffraction. A wide variety of techniques for guiding intense laser pulses has been investigated, including relativistic and ponderomotive channeling, hollow(passive) capillary tubes, ablation of capillaries by electrical discharges, z-pinch discharges, and laser-induced shocks.

In this working group (WG) we will examine techniques for production of long plasma channels (increased laser-plasma interaction length), production of low density (on-axis) channels (low plasma density increases detuning length), plasma density control (tapering, effect of plasma channel shape on beam propagation), and plasma diagnostics. The WG will be tasked with identifying the advantages and disadvantages of present guiding methods with respect to achieving a 1 GeV laser-plasma-based accelerating stage and identifying goals for future guiding experiments and studies.

The WG will accept contributed papers and ask invited speakers to review topics of general interest to the WG participants.