Models of sub-cycle electromagnetic pulse generation in laser-plasma interaction

Abstract

Sub-cycle pulses are ultra-short laser pulses containing less than a single oscillation and are essential tools in the study of matter at the shortest timescales. It has been recently proposed that such pulses can be attained by letting laser pulses interact with a plasma to generate amplified and compressed pulses. In the scheme of laser wakefield driven amplification (LWDA), an initial seed pulse is modulated by traveling electron plasma waves, forming amplified sub-cycle pulses. In this thesis we investigate the underlying mechanism of sub-cycle pulse generation in the scheme of LWDA. An analytical approach using the method of Green’s functions is used in conjunction with particle-in-cell simulations. Moreover, a custom code solving Maxwell’s equations with a source term given by a non-linear plasma wave model is implemented and its results compared with particle-in-cell simulations.