Single cycle thin film compressor opening the door to Zeptosecond-Exawatt physics

摘要

This article demonstrates a new compression scheme that has the potential to compress a high energy pulse as high as a few hundred Joules in a pulse as short as one optical cycle at 0.8 μm producing a true ultra-relativistic λ~3 pulse. This pulse would have a focused intensity of 10~(24)W/cm~2 or a0 of 1000. On interaction with a solid target, this pulse could form an efficient, 10%, relativistic mirror that could further compress the pulse to the atto-zeptosecond regime, with an upshifted wavelength of 1-10 keV. This technique could be a watershed enabling the compression of petawatt pulses into the exawatt and zeptosecond regime possible.