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Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers
Optical modulators can have high modulation speed and broad bandwidth, while being compact. However, these optical modulators usually work for low-intensity light beams. Here we present an ultrafast, plasma-based optical modulator, which can directly modulate high-power lasers with intensity up to 1...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27283369 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11893 |
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author | Yu, Lu-Le Zhao, Yao Qian, Lie-Jia Chen, Min Weng, Su-Ming Sheng, Zheng-Ming Jaroszynski, D. A. Mori, W. B. Zhang, Jie |
author_facet | Yu, Lu-Le Zhao, Yao Qian, Lie-Jia Chen, Min Weng, Su-Ming Sheng, Zheng-Ming Jaroszynski, D. A. Mori, W. B. Zhang, Jie |
author_sort | Yu, Lu-Le |
collection | PubMed |
description | Optical modulators can have high modulation speed and broad bandwidth, while being compact. However, these optical modulators usually work for low-intensity light beams. Here we present an ultrafast, plasma-based optical modulator, which can directly modulate high-power lasers with intensity up to 10(16) W cm(−2) to produce an extremely broad spectrum with a fractional bandwidth over 100%, extending to the mid-infrared regime in the low-frequency side. This concept relies on two co-propagating laser pulses in a sub-millimetre-scale underdense plasma, where a drive laser pulse first excites an electron plasma wave in its wake while a following carrier laser pulse is modulated by the plasma wave. The laser and plasma parameters suitable for the modulator to work are based on numerical simulations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4906397 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49063972016-06-24 Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers Yu, Lu-Le Zhao, Yao Qian, Lie-Jia Chen, Min Weng, Su-Ming Sheng, Zheng-Ming Jaroszynski, D. A. Mori, W. B. Zhang, Jie Nat Commun Article Optical modulators can have high modulation speed and broad bandwidth, while being compact. However, these optical modulators usually work for low-intensity light beams. Here we present an ultrafast, plasma-based optical modulator, which can directly modulate high-power lasers with intensity up to 10(16) W cm(−2) to produce an extremely broad spectrum with a fractional bandwidth over 100%, extending to the mid-infrared regime in the low-frequency side. This concept relies on two co-propagating laser pulses in a sub-millimetre-scale underdense plasma, where a drive laser pulse first excites an electron plasma wave in its wake while a following carrier laser pulse is modulated by the plasma wave. The laser and plasma parameters suitable for the modulator to work are based on numerical simulations. Nature Publishing Group 2016-06-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4906397/ /pubmed/27283369 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11893 Text en Copyright © 2016, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Yu, Lu-Le Zhao, Yao Qian, Lie-Jia Chen, Min Weng, Su-Ming Sheng, Zheng-Ming Jaroszynski, D. A. Mori, W. B. Zhang, Jie Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
title | Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
title_full | Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
title_fullStr | Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
title_full_unstemmed | Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
title_short | Plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
title_sort | plasma optical modulators for intense lasers |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27283369 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11893 |
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