Plasma-based Pulse Compression for post-Exawatt Lasers

M.S. Hur

CPA technique has made the petawatt lasers available. Modetrn theoretical physics requires millions times stronger lasers for studying pair-productions from vacuum. As the solid gratings used in conventional CPA cannot sustain such a high laser field, the technological limitation of CPA is at hand. Here we present a totally new idea of pulse compression using plasmas; it is based on exploiting the plasma-intrinsic, density-dependent refractive index. From PIC simulations, we witnessed 100% compression of the pulse. We wil examine the potential of our new idea for the next generation post-CPA.