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arXiv · 2410.07965

Field enhancement of intense laser pulses in a subwavelength plasma aperture

Xiaohui Gao
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Abstract

The interaction of intense, ultra-short laser pulses with nanostructures offers promising avenues for spatiotemporal light control. While enhanced optical transmission through subwavelength apertures has been extensively studied in the linear regime, its extension to ultrashort, high-intensity pulses remains largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate, through three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, significant field enhancement of intense laser pulses in subwavelength plasma apertures. The enhancement exhibits a non-resonant character, remaining robust across a wide range of plasma densities and saturating above approximately $20n_c$, while showing minimal dependence on wall thickness. Analysis of the Poynting vector reveals that energy concentration arises from interference between the incident field and back-scattered longitudinal field components. This size-dependent enhanced transmission in plasma apertures enables potential applications such as plasma-based dichroic filters operating at extreme intensities.

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Xiaohui Gao. 2024-10-10. Field enhancement of intense laser pulses in a subwavelength plasma aperture. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.07965

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