Overview
- The Oxford-led team, which published the results Wednesday in Nature, used the Gemini laser in the UK to demonstrate relativistic plasma harmonics and a coherent harmonic focus with partners from Queen’s University Belfast, AWE plc, the University of Michigan, and the University of Jena.
- They drove an intense laser pulse into a plasma that acted like a mirror racing toward the beam, which upshifted and compressed the light into extreme ultraviolet in a process called relativistic harmonic generation.
- The researchers then combined many harmonic colors to a single microscopic point in a coherent harmonic focus, which sharply increased the electric field in the focus.
- The setup keeps the whole interaction in the laser system, which lets scientists observe extreme light–vacuum effects directly rather than inferring them from particle–beam collisions.
- Simulations indicate the source may be the most intense coherent light yet made in a lab, and the team plans new runs at Gemini and larger facilities to verify the peak intensity and pursue QED measurements.