Abstract

Extreme intensities reached thanks to high-power femtosecond lasers, that exceed now 10²⁰W/cm², open a path to new generations of compact particle accelerators and X-ray sources by exploiting ultrahigh intensity laser-plasma interactions. Fully characterizing the dynamics of such interactions as well as the resulting light and particle emissions is an essential step towards such achievements. However, this is experimentally extremely challenging as measurements can only be performed far from the interaction zone, at macroscopic distances, due to extreme physical conditions, whereas the phenomena to be resolved involve microscopic scales. Here, we presente the first measurements of the spatial properties (amplitude and phase profiles) of a high-order harmonic source generated on a solid target by adapting the concepts of ptychography.

© 2015 IEEE