Manipulating energy mergence of ultraintense femtosecond laser beamlets in underdense plasmas

The propagation of multiple ultraintense femtosecond lasers in underdense plasmas is investigated theoretically and numerically. We find that the energy merging effect between two in-phase seed lasers can be improved by using two obliquely incident guiding lasers whose initial phase is π and π /2 ahead of the seed laser. Particle-in-cell simulations show that due to the repulsion and energy transfer of the guiding laser, the peak intensity of the merged light is amplified by more than five times compared to the seed laser. The energy conversion efficiency from all incident lasers to the merged light is up to approximately 60 $%$ . The results are useful for many applications, including plasma-based optical amplification, charged particle acceleration and extremely intense magnetic field generation.