Self-guiding of 100 TW femtosecond laser pulses in centimeter-scale underdense plasma

Chen, L.-M.; Kotaki, Hideyuki; Nakajima, Kazuhisa*; Koga, J. K.; Bulanov, S. V.; Tajima, Toshiki; Gu, Y. Q.*; Peng, H. S.*; Wang, X. X.*; Wen, T. S.*; Liu, H. J.*; Jiao, C. Y.*; Zhang, C. G.*; Huang, X. J.*; Guo, Y.*; Zhou, K. N.*; Hua, J. F.*; An, W. M.*; Tang, C. X.*; Lin, Y. Z.*

An experiment for the laser self-guiding studies has been carried out with 100 TW laser pulse interaction with the long underdense plasma. Formation of extremely long plasma channel with its length, about 10 mm, 20 times above the Rayleigh length is observed. The self-focusing channel features such as the laser pulse significant bending and the electron cavity formation are demonstrated experimentally for the first time.