new developments<\/a> in fusion energy, particle acceleration and astrophysics.<\/p>\n\u201cFor a long time, people have used high-power and high-intensity laser pulses to drive plasmas,\u201d said LLNL scientist and lead author Andrew Longman. \u201cBut those lasers are almost always in their simplest configuration. It\u2019s basically a round spot\u2014nothing especially interesting. It\u2019s like hitting the plasma with a hammer. We\u2019re interested in laser pulses that are structured in both space and time because they let us do unusual things, like stir the plasma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Producing freeform optics down to the nanometer<\/p>\n
Using specialised beamsplitters- one containing shorter (\u201cblue\u201d) wavelengths and the other longer (\u201cred\u201d) wavelengths- researchers split a broadband laser into two beams.<\/p>\n
Each beam then reflects from a custom, nanostructured mirror, produced by LLNL\u2019s National Ignition Facility and Photon Science directorate.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some of these freeform optics, across the entire optic, the difference between the design and the finished part was only about five nanometers,\u201d said author Tayyab Suratwala, the program director for Optics and Materials Science and Technology at LLNL. \u201cWe\u2019re talking down to almost the atomic scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
After reflecting from the two mirrors, a second beamsplitter recombines the two beams and alignes them precisely in space and time, creating the twisting laser pulse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Ghostbusters, they have the proton packs that fire one beam down the middle and another that spirals around it,\u201d Professor Franklin Dollar, who helped assemble and test the laser at UC Irvine, said. \u201cAt high intensities, we only knew how to make the middle beam. Now we can make the spiraling beam too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spiral laser spring has a wide range of potential applications<\/p>\n
Simulations using light springs suggest that a table-top scale laser system could generate strong magnetic fields, exceeding 100 teslas, by driving helical plasma waves that behave like tiny electromagnetic coils.<\/p>\n
These intense magnetic fields generated in a laboratory setting would give scientists opportunity to explore atom behaviour and the light they emit under extreme circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nice thing was that it was all done on a laser that can just literally fit on your tabletop,\u201d Longman said. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to have these large-scale multimillion-dollar lasers in order to do original work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another application is in plasma-based particle acceleration. Simulations suggest that helical plasma waves driven by light springs could prevent electrons outrunning the laser pulse accelerating them, meaning they stay in the accelerating region long enough to reach higher energies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can really crank up the fields for how fast we accelerate particles,\u201d Dollar said. \u201cWe can get similar energies to what you might get out of a giant accelerator facility in something like a centimeter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of California, Irvine have designed a new high-intensity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[20549,18,19,17,5474,133],"class_list":["post-563318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-disruptive-technology","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-particle-physics","tag-science"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116844559707031817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}