Raman Amplification with a Flying Focus

We propose a new laser amplifier scheme utilizing stimulated Raman scattering in plasma in conjunction with a "flying focus"-a chromatic focusing system combined with a chirped pump beam that provides spatiotemporal control over the pump's focal spot. Pump intensity isosurfaces are made to propagate at v=-c so as to be in sync with the injected counterpropagating seed pulse. By setting the pump intensity in the interaction region to be just above the ionization threshold of the background gas, an ionization wave is produced that travels at a fixed distance ahead of the seed. Simulations show that this will make it possible to optimize the plasma temperature and mitigate many of the issues that are known to have impacted previous Raman amplification experiments, in particular, the growth of precursors.