We propose a new approach to avoid dephasing limitation of laser wakefield acceleration by manipulating the group velocity of the driving pulse using clustered plasmas. We demonstrated the control of phase velocity in ...

Using an evolutionary strategy algorithm, we optimize the generalized transformer ration of a laser wakefield accelerator. The algorithm tests several realistic pulse shapes by integrating the fluid wakefield differential ...

We report a two-color terawatt laser system for use in controlling laser-plasma instabilities. The system includes a commercial 45 TW Ti:Sapphire laser system at 800 nm, temporally synchronized with a 1 TW CPA Raman-Ti:Sapphire ...

We introduce Frequency-Domain Tomography (FDT) for visualizing sub-ps evolution of light-speed refractive index structures in a single shot. As a prototype demonstration, we produce single-shot tomographic movies of ...

We globally optimize a terawatt-laser-driven wakefield accelerator by systematically varying laser and target parameters to achieve 100 MeV electrons, 10% energy spread, 100 pC charge, 4 mrad divergence and 10 mrad pointing ...

Electron self-injection into a laser-plasma accelerator (LPA) driven by the Texas Petawatt (TPW) laser is reported at plasma densities 1.7 - 6.2 x 10(17) cm(-3). Energy and charge of the electron beam, ranging from 0.5 GeV ...

We report guiding of intense (I = 1.3 +/- 0.7 x 10(17)W/cm(2)) 80 fs laser pulses with negligible spectral distortion through 1.5-cm-long preformed helium plasma channels. Channels were formed by axicon-focused Nd:YAG laser ...