Recent years have brought major advances in controlling the spatial and temporal structure of laser pulses, enabling new research areas. These include beams with realistic fusion beam smoothing, “flying focus” pulses where the peak intensity moves at superluminal or subluminal speeds, beams with orbital angular momentum, and lasers with spatially varying polarization. Intense particle beams can also be produced using flying foci and chromatic lenses.

While the vacuum behavior of such lasers and beams is well understood, their interactions with plasmas are only beginning to be explored. The INCITE project has upgraded the OSIRIS particle-in-cell code to launch lasers with arbitrary spatial-temporal profiles (ASTRL pulses). Using this capability, the team proposes computational studies to build understanding of these interactions and develop near-term applications.

The research aims to advance compact and efficient plasma-based accelerators and light sources, ultrahigh-power lasers via Raman and Brillouin amplification, and control of laser-plasma instabilities in inertial fusion targets using bandwidth.

The team is utilizing computing resources on Polaris at Argonne National Laboratory, where they have already demonstrated positive scaling and high productivity.