[Under construction]2015 AFOSR MURIHarnessing Strong-Field Mid-Infrared (IR) Lasers: Designer Beams of Relativistic Particles and THz-to-X-ray LightPO: Dr. Riq ParraPI: Dr. Margaret MurnaneWebsite: TBD
Our proposed MURI effort brings together a world-leading US-UK-Austrai-Spain-Israel-Taiwan team with many successful joint collaborations and publications, and with most advanced world-leading capabilities in mid-IR lasers. Our team has already demonstrated several breakthroughs showing that mid-IR lasers can be used to great advantages for HHG and selfguiding.
Thus our proposed MURI effort can go beyond simple demonstration experiments, scaling law validation or capability development. We can now address the overarching question for this area: what are the best routes for mid-IR lasers to achieve finer control, higher energy-density and increased efficiency over light-matter interactions compared with near-IR lasers, to create designer beams of relativistic charged particles and X-ray light with control over the spectral, temporal, spatial and polarization properties? Addressing this question requires a combined experiment/theory multidisciplinary team that spans nonlinear, plasma, laser and X-ray science - from quantum to many-body – as well as unique mid-IR laser and computational capabilities.
We already have exciting preliminary data that shows the tremendous promise of mid-IR lasers for X-ray waveform control and atmospheric propagation. Thus, we believe that we can make revolutionary advances in our ability to produce and exploit tabletop beams of particles and THz-to-X-ray light. Critical for success will be our high-repetition rate (≈10Hz to kHz), multi-millijoule, mid-IR lasers that are already available for this research. We have organized our research around four interacting thrusts, described in the proposal.