Optical Guiding in Meter-Scale Plasma Waveguides

We demonstrate a new highly tunable technique for generating meter-scale low density plasma waveguides. Such guides can enable laser-driven 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, enabling wide control of the guide's density, depth, and mode confinement. We demonstrate guiding of intense laser pulses over hundreds of Rayleigh lengths with on-axis plasma densities as low as N_{e0}∼5×10^{16}  cm^{-3}.