Generation and application of high-contrast laser pulses using plasma mirror in the SULF-1PW beamline

The plasma mirror system was installed on the 1 PW laser beamline of Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility [SULF)for enhancing the temporal contrast of the laser pulse. About 2 orders of magnitude improvement on pulse contrast was measured on picosecond and nanosecond time scales. The experiments show that high-contrast laser pulses can significantly improve the cutoff energy and quantity of proton beams. Then different target distributions are assumed in particles in cell simulations, ...     

Scalable Talbot effect of periodic array objects

A type of scalable self-imaging capable of variable magnification or minification of periodic objects is demonstrated in the focal plane of a lens illuminated by a point source.The theory and the experimental results show that the self-imaging phenomenon can also be realized in the focal plane of a lens regardless of whether the distances satisfy the lens formula or not.The particular property of this scalable self-imaging effect is that the images in the focal plane can be controlled with different scaling factors only when the distances between the point source and the periodic object satisfy a certain condition.This discovery should open a new field of diffraction imaging and new application opportunities in precision measurement.