Seed laser chirping for enhanced backward Raman amplification in plasmas

Backward Raman compression in plasma enables pulse compression to intensities not available using material gratings. Mediating the compression with higher density plasma generally produces shorter and therefore more intense output pulses. However, very high density plasma, even if sufficiently tenuous to be transparent to the laser, also produces group velocity dispersion of the amplified pulse, deleteriously affecting the interaction. What is shown here is that, by chirping the seed pulse, the group velocity dispersion may in fact be used advantageously, achieving the maximum intensities over the shortest distances while minimizing unwanted effects.