Ion acceleration and extreme light field generation based on ultra-short and ultra–intense lasers, 2014
Springer Theses Series

This book is dedicated to the relativistic (laser intensity above 1018 W/cm2) laser-plasma interactions, which mainly concerns two important aspects: ion acceleration and extreme-light-field (ELF). Based on the ultra-intense and ultra?short CP lasers, this book proposes a new method that significantly improves the efficiency of heavy-ion acceleration, and deals with the critical thickness issues of light pressure acceleration. More importantly, a series of plasma approaches for producing ELFs, such as the relativistic single-cycle laser pulse, the intense broad-spectrum chirped laser pulse and the ultra-intense isolated attosecond (10-18s) pulse are introduced. This book illustrates that plasma not only affords a tremendous accelerating gradient for ion acceleration but also serves as a novel medium for ELF generation, and hence has the potential of plasma-based optics, which have a great advantage on the light intensity due to the absence of device damage threshold.

Introduction.- Ion acceleration I: Efficient heavy ion acceleration by ESA.- Ion acceleration II: The critical target thickness in light sail acceleration.- Extreme light field generation I: Quasi-single-cycle relativistic laser pulse.- Extreme light field generation II: Short-wavelength single-cycle ultra-intense laser pulse.- Extreme light field generation III: Ultra-intense isolated attosecond pulse.- Summary.

Liangliang Ji received his B. Sc. in physics from University of Science and Technology of China in 2006. He obtained his Ph. D. in physics in July 2011, from Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. During his Ph.D. study in the group of Prof. Baifei Shen,  he mainly worked on new particle acceleration schemes and extreme light field generation based on relativistic laser-plasma interaction. Later on, he won Alexander von Humboldt fellowship and became a post-doc fellow working with Prof. Alexander Pukhov at Duesseldorf University in Germany. His recent research interests include laser-ion acceleration and  the effects of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in strong relativistic laser-plasma interaction.

Nominated as an outstanding Ph.D. thesis by Chinese Academy of Sciences Proposes a new method significantly improving the efficiency of heavy-ion acceleration Shows the potential of plasma-based relativistic optics for generating extreme light fields Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras