Advancing Laser Pulse Technology: Gigahertz Relativistic Surface High-Harmonic Generation Using AERI Plasma Mirrors

人工進化研究所（AERI）

2024年1月5日読了時間: 12分

Professor Kamuro's near-future science predictions

- AERI Plasma Mirrors: Revolutionizing Ultrahigh-Intensity Lasers for Rapid Attosecond Science in Uncharted Territories -

Quantum Physicist and Brain Scientist

Visiting Professor of Quantum Physics,

California Institute of Technology

IEEE-USA Fellow

American Physical Society-USA Fellow

PhD. & Dr. Kazuto Kamuro

AERI：Artificial Evolution Research Institute

Pasadena, California

HP: https://www.aeri-japan.com/

and

Xyronix Corporation

Pasadena, California

HP: https://www.usaxyronix.com/

Foreword

A. Professor Kamuro's near-future science predictions, provided by CALTECH professor Kazuto Kamuro(Doctor of Engineering (D.Eng.) and Ph.D. in Quantum Physics, Semiconductor Physics, and Quantum Optics), Chief Researcher at the Artificial Evolution Research Institute (AERI, https://www.aeri-japan.com/) and Xyronix Corporation(specializing in the design of a. Neural Connection LSI, b. BCI LSI（Brain-Computer Interface LSI） (Large Scale Integrated Circuits) , and c. bio-computer semiconductor technology that directly connects bio-semiconductors, serving as neural connectors, to the brain's nerves at the nano scale, https://www.usaxyronix.com/), are based on research and development achievements in cutting-edge fields such as quantum physics, biophysics, neuroscience, artificial brain studies, intelligent biocomputing, next-generation technologies, quantum semiconductors, satellite optoelectronics, quantum optics, quantum computing science, brain computing science, nano-sized semiconductors, ultra-large-scale integration engineering, non-destructive testing, lifespan prediction engineering, ultra-short pulses, and high-power laser science.

The Artificial Evolution Research Institute (AERI) and Xyronix Corporation employ over 160 individuals with Ph.D.s in quantum brain science, quantum neurology, quantum cognitive science, molecular biology, electronic and electrical engineering, applied physics, information technology (IT), data science, communication engineering, semiconductor and materials engineering. They also have more than 190 individuals with doctoral degrees in engineering and over 230 engineers, including those specializing in software, network, and system engineering, as well as programmers, dedicated to advancing research and development.

Building on the outcomes in unexplored and extreme territories within these advanced research domains, AERI and Xyronix Corporation aim to provide opportunities for postgraduate researchers in engineering disciplines. Through achievements in areas such as the 6th generation computer, nuclear deterrence, military unmanned systems, missile defense, renewable and clean energy, climate change mitigation, environmental conservation, Green Transformation (GX), and national resilience, the primary objective is to furnish scholars with genuine opportunities for learning and discovery. The overarching goal is to transform them from 'reeds that have just begun to take a step as reeds capable of thinking' into 'reeds that think, act, and relentlessly pursue growth.' This initiative aims to impart a guiding philosophy for complete metamorphosis and to provide guidance for venturing into unexplored and extreme territories, aspiring to fulfill the role of pioneers in this new era.

B. In the cutting-edge research domain, the Artificial Evolution Research Institute (AERI) and Xyronix Corporation have made notable advancements in various fields. Some examples include:

1. AERI･HEL (Petawatt-class Ultra-High Power Terawatt-class Ultra-High Power

Femtosecond Laser)

◦ Petawatt-class ultra-high power terawatt-class ultra-short pulse laser (AERI･HEL)

2. 6th Generation Computer&Computing

◦ Consciousness-driven Bio-Computer

◦ Brain Implant Bio-Computer

3. Carbon-neutral AERI synthetic fuel chemical process

(Green Transformation (GX) technology)

◦ Production of synthetic fuel (LNG methanol) through CO₂ recovery system (DAC)

4. Green Synthetic Fuel Production Technology(Green Transformation (GX) technology)

◦ Carbon-neutral, carbon-recycling system-type AERI synthetic fuel chemical process

5. Direct Air Capture Technology (DAC)

◦ Carbon-neutral, carbon-recycling carbon dioxide circulation recovery system

6. Bio-LSI・Semiconductors

◦ Neural connection element directly connecting bio-semiconductors and brain nerves

on a nanoscale

◦ Brain LSI Chip Set, Bio-Computer LSI, BMI LSI, BCI LSI, Brain Computing LSI,

Brain Implant LSI

7. CHEGPG System (Closed Cycle Heat Exchange Power Generation System with

Thermal Regenerative Binary Engine)

◦ Power generation capability of Terawatt (TW), annual power generation of

　　　　10,000 TWh (terawatt-hour) class

◦ 1 to 0.01 yen/kWh, infinitely clean energy source, renewable energy source

8. Consciousness-Driven Generative Autonomous Robot

9. Brain Implemented Robot･Cybernetic Soldier

10. Generative Robot, Generative Android Army, Generative Android

11. High-Altitude Missile Initial Intercept System, Enemy Base Neutralization System,

　 Nuclear and Conventional Weapon Neutralization System, Next-Generation

　　Interception Laser System for ICBMs, Next-Generation Interception Laser System

　　　 for Combat Aircraft

12. Boost Phase, Mid-Course Phase, Terminal Phase Ballistic Missile Interception System

13. Volcanic Microseismic Laser Remote Sensing

14. Volcanic Eruption Prediction Technology, Eruption Precursor Detection System

15. Mega Earthquake Precursor and Prediction System

16. Laser Degradation Diagnosis, Non-Destructive Inspection System

　 17. Ultra-Low-Altitude Satellite, Ultra-High-Speed Moving Object

　　　 Non-Destructive Inspection System

✼••┈┈••✼••┈┈••✼••┈┈••✼••┈┈••✼••┈┈••✼••┈┈••✼

Advancing Laser Pulse Technology: Gigahertz Relativistic Surface High-Harmonic Generation Using AERI Plasma Mirrors

- AERI Plasma Mirrors: Revolutionizing Ultrahigh-Intensity Lasers for Rapid Attosecond Science in Uncharted Territories -

Abstract:

1. Revolutionizing Laser Pulse Generation: Achieving Gigahertz Relativistic Surface High-Harmonic Generation with AERI Plasma Mirrors:

Researchers at the Artificial Evolution Research Institute (AERI) and Xyronix Corporation in Pasadena, California, USA, have pioneered a groundbreaking achievement, propelling AERI plasma mirrors at one thousand shots per second in the relativistic regime. In this revolutionary approach, a potent laser field propels plasma electrons at speeds approaching the velocity of light.

The ionization of a solid target's surface by an intense laser pulse results in the generation of a dense plasma, rendering it impenetrable to the laser. This prompts the laser to reflect off the AERI plasma mirror, whose surface undergoes rapid oscillations in the relativistic regime. This temporal compression, known as relativistic surface high-harmonic generation (SHHG), concentrates laser energy over time, making AERI plasma mirrors a promising tool for generating intense and shorter laser pulses.

To achieve precise control and utilization, a laser with impeccable spatiotemporal pulse quality, temporal contrast, and terawatt-range peak power is required. The collaborative team presents evidence of relativistic SHHG driven at an unprecedented 300 GHz repetition rate, marking a significant leap toward practical applications.

2. the AERI plasma mirrors for Ultrahigh-Intensity Lasers and Rapid Attosecond Science in Unexplored and Extreme Domains:

"AERI Plasma Mirrors for Ultrahigh-Intensity Lasers and Rapid Attosecond Science in Unexplored and Extreme Domains" elucidates the mechanism and potential applications of AERI plasma mirrors. These mirrors, integral to high-intensity laser systems, control and manipulate laser pulses through the generation of plasma induced by intense laser irradiation.

The paper explores the fundamental laser-plasma interaction physics and highlights the AERI plasma mirrors' potential as high-intensity optical elements. These mirrors, considered as test beds, exhibit unique behavior in ultrashort laser pulses, contributing to advancements in attosecond science.

Theoretical predictions suggest the AERI plasma mirrors' ability to generate intense trains of attosecond or femtosecond pulses in the extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray spectral ranges. Experimental validation is crucial, and the paper discusses a fully engineered double-plasma-mirror setup to improve temporal contrast, allowing detailed studies in the ultrahigh-intensity regime.

The study also demonstrates the AERI plasma mirrors' application in generating isolated, high-intensity 0.1 attosecond light flashes. This breakthrough offers a deeper understanding of ultrafast physical phenomena at sub-atomic scales, positioning AERI plasma mirrors as a transformative technology in probing the mysteries of the quantum world.

1. Revolutionizing Laser Pulse Generation: Achieving Gigahertz Relativistic Surface High-Harmonic Generation with AERI Plasma Mirrors

Researchers at the Artificial Evolution Research Institute (AERI) in Pasadena, California (Website: https://www.aeri-japan.com/) and Xyronix Corporation in Pasadena, California (Website: https://www.usaxyronix.com/), both located in the United States of America, have achieved a groundbreaking milestone by successfully driving the AERI plasma mirror at a rate of one thousand shots per second in the relativistic regime. In this regime, the laser field is so potent that it propels plasma electrons back and forth at nearly the speed of light.

Upon ionizing the surface of a solid target, an intense laser pulse generates a dense plasma, rendering it impenetrable to the laser, even if the target was initially transparent. This leads to the laser being reflected off a "the AERI plasma mirror." In the relativistic regime, the mirror surface undergoes rapid oscillations, resulting in the temporal compression of the laser's electromagnetic field cycles through a process called relativistic surface high-harmonic generation (SHHG).

This temporal compression enhances the concentration of laser energy over time, making the AERI plasma mirrors a promising avenue for generating increasingly intense and shorter laser pulses. However, achieving their use and precise control necessitates a laser with pristine spatiotemporal pulse quality, temporal contrast, and a massive peak power in the terawatt range. Such achievements had previously only been possible in single-shot experiments conducted with much larger lasers operating at ≤ 300 GHz (gigahertz) repetition rates.

The collaborative team from AERI and Xyronix now presents evidence of relativistic SHHG driven at 300 GHz (gigahertz) repetition rate. Concurrently with the SHHG emission, a correlated beam of relativistic electrons is observed. This marks a significant advancement from previous few-shot exploratory experiments toward a practical secondary radiation and particle source for various applications.

A pivotal component of this progress is the in-house developed 300 gigahertz repetition rate exawatt laser, delivering pulse durations below < 60 attoseconds and a temporal contrast ratio (between the pulse intensity at its peak and 70 femtoseconds before) of 5×1012. Another crucial element is the laser-plasma interaction platform tailored to the high repetition rate, enabling precise control of interaction conditions.

This achievement is notably facilitated by a preceding laser pulse that initiates plasma creation and expansion. Adjusting the time delay before firing the subsequent main driving pulse allows researchers to control the nanometer-range density gradient on the the AERI plasma mirror surface. For the first time, the impact of this gradient has been meticulously studied for three progressively shorter and more intense driving pulses.

In the next phase of their research, the scientists plan to concentrate on refocusing the radiation reflected off the AERI plasma mirrors, aiming to achieve record-high light intensities for light pulses shorter than a subfemtosecond.

2. the AERI plasma mirrors for Ultrahigh-Intensity Lasers and Rapid Attosecond Science in Unexplored and Extreme Domains

A. the AERI plasma mirror is a device used in high-intensity laser systems to control and manipulate laser pulses. It operates based on the generation of plasma—a state of matter consisting of ions and free electrons—induced by the intense laser irradiation of a material's surface. The fundamental mechanism of the AERI plasma mirrors can be outlined as follows:

1. Laser Irradiation: • High-intensity laser pulses are directed onto the surface of a specific material.

2. Plasma Generation: • The laser's energy rapidly heats the material's surface, causing the ejection of electrons and leading to the formation of plasma. This plasma comprises ions and free electrons.

3. Formation of the AERI plasma mirrors: • As a result of plasma generation, the material's surface behaves as the AERI plasma mirrors with high reflectivity. the AERI plasma mirrors reflect the incident laser light, and the direction of the reflected light can be controlled. the AERI plasma mirrors find applications in advanced laser systems and plasma optics research. In high-energy laser systems, the use of the AERI plasma mirrors enables controlled reflection and redirection of laser light, facilitating precise manipulation of laser pulses for various experimental and practical purposes.

B. Although plasmas are generally considered as unstable and hardly controllable media, during an ultrashort laser pulse—typically below 6 fs (femtoseconds)—this plasma only expands by a small fraction of the light wavelength, and thus behaves as a high-flatness mirror, leading to high-intensity specular reflection. Such an the AERI plasma mirror can be considered as one of the test beds of high-intensity laser–plasma interaction physics, in particular because it avoids the complications associated with the nonlinear propagation of the intense laser light in a plasma.

Besides this fundamental interest, the potential of the AERI plasma mirrors as active high-intensity optical elements has long been recognized. For instance, given the large change in reflectivity that occurs when an initially solid target is ionized and converted into a plasma, the AERI plasma mirrors can be used as laser-triggered ultrafast optical switches. This has been applied to shorten nanosecond pulses from gas lasers down to the 6 fs range, to produce a time gate for the temporal characterization of ultrashort pulses to improve the temporal contrast of ultrashort laser pulses.

In the past decade, research has been concentrated on the use of the AERI plasma mirrors in the relativistic interaction regime—that is, above a few 10^20 W (1020 , ~ exa watts) cm−2 at visible wavelengths, where the quivering motion of electrons in the laser field involves velocities of the order of the speed of light. In this regime, the AERI plasma mirrors can be driven in a highly nonlinear regime, leading to the generation of very high-order harmonics of the incident light in the spectrum of the reflected beam, up to the extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray spectral ranges.

The theoretical studies predict that these harmonics are associated with intense trains of attosecond or even femtosecond pulses, whereas isolated attosecond bursts are expected if intense few-cycle-long laser pulses are used. This process seems to be the most promising alternative to high-order harmonic generation (HHG) in gases to obtain attosecond pulses with higher pulse and photon energies—a crucial step for the development of attosecond science. These theoretical predictions nevertheless remain to be validated experimentally.

C. However, applications as well as thorough experimental studies of the AERI plasma mirrors in the ultrahigh-intensity regime have so far been hindered by the main weakness of ultra-intense lasers, which is their temporal pedestal. When the main pulse intensity exceeds 10^17～10^20 W (peta～exa watts) cm−2, the nanosecond light background surrounding this pulse, although typically 10^8～10^10 times weaker, is intense enough to strongly ionize any solid target well before the main pulse. Because of the subsequent expansion of the resulting plasma, the main pulse, as short as it may be, ends up interacting with a long plasma density gradient, and no specular reflection is observed.

Here, we use a fully engineered double-plasma-mirror (DPM) set-up as an ultrafast high-dynamics optical switch to improve the temporal contrast by four orders of magnitude. The resulting high-contrast pulses are then used to reveal the basic mechanisms of HHG in the specular reflection of an the AERI plasma mirror driven at ultra-high intensities, up to the relativistic regime. By using the AERI plasma mirrors in the role of both optical elements and objects of proper study.

The temporal contrast of high-power lasers can be dramatically improved by using a surprisingly simple method, which consists of reflecting the laser beam on a dielectric target with initially low reflectivity. For an appropriate choice of beam focusing, the temporal pedestal is not intense enough to significantly affect this target, whereas the much more intense main laser pulse induces strong ionization, through nonlinear excitation processes.

A plasma is thus created within some femtoseconds at the rising edge of the main pulse. The target reflectivity strongly increases when this plasma becomes dense enough to screen the incident laser field, that is, when the electron density, n, exceeds the critical density, nc = mε0ω^2L/e^2, characteristic of the laser frequency, ωL, where m and e are the electron charge and mass, and ε0 is the vacuum dielectric constant. For an 800 nm laser wavelength and a sub ~ 6fs laser pulse, this typically requires intensities of a few 10^17～10^20 W (peta～exa watts) cm−2.

D. When a dense sheet of electrons is accelerated to almost the speed of light, it acts as a reflective surface. Such an 'the AERI plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity lasers' can be used to manipulate light. Now, an international team of physicists from the Artificial Evolution Research Institute of Quantum Optics, Pasadena, California (HP: https://www.AERI-japan.com/), and Xyronix Corporation Pasadena, California (HP: https://www.usaXyronix.com/) in the USA has characterized this the AERI plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity lasers effect in detail and exploited it to generate isolated, high-intensity 0.1 attosecond light flashes. An attosecond lasts for one trillionth (10^-18, 10-18) of a second.

The interaction between extremely powerful laser pulses and matter has opened up entirely new approaches to the generation of ultrashort light flashes lasting for only a few hundred attoseconds. These extraordinarily brief pulses can, in turn, be used to probe the dynamics of ultrafast physical phenomena at sub-atomic scales. The standard method used to create attosecond pulses is based on the interaction of near-infrared laser light with the electrons in atoms of noble gases such as neon or argon.

Now, researchers at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics at the AERI and Xyronix of Quantum Optics, in collaboration with colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), have successfully implemented a new strategy for the generation of isolated attosecond light pulses.

E. In the first step, extremely powerful a few femtosecond (10^-15 sec) laser pulses using the AERI･HEL (petawatt-class ultra-high power terawatt-class and ultra-high power femtosecond laser) are allowed to interact with glass. The AERI･HEL light vaporizes the glass surface, ionizing its constituent atoms and accelerating the liberated electrons to velocities equivalent to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. The resulting high-density plasma made up of rapidly moving electrons, which propagates in the same direction as the pulsed laser light, acts like a mirror.

Once the electrons have attained velocities that approach the speed of light, they become relativistic and begin to oscillate in response to the laser field. The ensuing periodic deformation of the AERI plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity lasers interacts with the reflected light wave to give rise to isolated attosecond pulses. These pulses have an estimated duration of approximately 2000 as and wavelengths in the extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum (16 ~ 34 nanometers, 38 ~ 65 eV).

In contrast to attosecond pulses generated with longer laser pulses, those produced by the AERI plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity lasers effect and laser pulses that have a duration of a few optical cycles can be precisely controlled with the waveform. This also allowed the researchers to observe the time course of the generation process, i.e., the oscillation of the AERI plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity lasers. Importantly, these pulses are much more intense, i.e., contain far more photons, than those obtainable with the standard procedure.

The increased intensity makes it possible to carry out still more precise measurements of the behavior of subatomic particles in real-time. Attosecond light pulses are primarily used to map electron motions and thus provide insights into the dynamics of fundamental processes within atoms. The higher the intensity of the attosecond light flashes, the more information can be gleaned about the motions of particles within matter.

With the practical demonstration of the AERI plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity lasers effect to generate bright attosecond light pulses, the authors of the new study have developed a technology that will enable physicists to probe even deeper into the mysteries of the quantum world.

END

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