Development Of 873 nm Raman Seed Pulse For Raman-Seeded Laser Wakefield Acceleration

By using a Raman-shifted seed pulse coincident with a main driving pulse. laser wakefields can be generated with sub-relativistic intensity, coherent control and high repetition rate in the self-modulated regime. Experimentally, the generation of a chirped Stokes laser pulse by inserting a solid state Raman shifter, Ba(NO3)(2), into a CPA system before the compressor (to suppress self-phase modulation) will be described. We will also report on design. modeling and experimental demonstration of a novel compressor for the Stokes pulse that uses a mismatched grating pair to achieve a near transform-limited seed pulse. Finally, we will describe the design. simulation and current status of Raman-seeded LWFA experiments that use this novel source..