Optical guiding in meter-scale plasma waveguides

Abstract: We demonstrate a new highly tunable technique for generating meter-scale low density plasma waveguides. Such guides can enable electron acceleration to tens of GeV in a single stage. Plasma waveguides are imprinted in hydrogen gas by optical field ionization induced by two time-separated Bessel beam pulses: The first pulse, a J_0 beam, generates the core of the waveguide, while the delayed second pulse, here a J_8 or J_16 beam, generates the waveguide cladding. We demonstrate guiding of intense laser pulses over hundreds of Rayleigh lengths with on axis plasma densities as low as N_e0=5x10^16 cm^-3.