Exploring new horizon of ultrashort relativistic laser-matter interactions.

Ever since the birth of the first laser, the frontiers of light-matter interaction have continued to expand [1]. Starting with the second harmonic conversion, essentially a two-photon process in eV energy scales, the state-of-art Petawatt (PW) lasers have demonstrated MeV energy scale phenomena such as inverse-Compton scattering [2]. These PW lasers offer a platform to study highly non-perturbative light-matter interaction, as the peak laser intensity can be several orders of magnitude stronger than the atomic field intensity. The extreme field (TV/m) present in the focus of these lasers can be utilized for the acceleration of electrons to relativistic energy in a distance as short as a few laser wavelengths. In this talk, we will be exploring few aspects of relativistic phenomena at these intensities such as relativistic transparency, and electrostatic shocks. 

1) Gerard A. Mourou, Toshiki Tajima, and Sergei V. Bulanov Rev. Mod. Phys. 78, 309 (2006)             
2) A. Gonoskov, T. G. Blackburn, M. Marklund, and S. S. Bulanov Rev. Mod. Phys. 94 045001 (2022)