Electromagnetically Induced Guiding of Counter-Propagating Lasers in Plasmas
Authors: G. Shvets and A. Pukhov
The interaction of counter-propagating laser pulses in a plasma is considered. When the frequencies of the two lasers are close, nonlinear modification of the refraction index results in the mutual focusing of the two beams. A short (of order the plasma period) laser pulse can also be nonlinearly focused by a long counter-propagating beam which extends over the entire guiding length. This phenomenon of electromagnetically induced guiding can be utilized in laser-driven plasma accelerators.