The advent of femtosecond lasers with relativistic intensity has opened a new frontier of research–high-field physics. Under such a strong electromagnetic field it becomes possible to use plasmas as nonlinear optical medium. Plasma nonlinear optics is a crucial approach for controlling laser-plasma interaction in high-field physics. The ability to fabricate gas and/or plasma density structures is the crucial element for attaining fine control on laser-plasma interaction. In this talk, I will present an effective method for fabricating arbitrary spatial transient-density structures in gases and/or plasmas that function as programmable photonic devices in high-field physics. This technique will be applied to development of ultrafast photon and particle beams for scientific research.

Dr. Pai obtained his Ph.D of Physics in 2009 from National Taiwan University, and currently he is working at University of Texas at Austin as a Postdoc Researcher. He has more than 10 years extensive research experiences on ultrafast high power laser development and high field laser plasma experiments, and has made many important experimental contribution to this fast growing field, including demonstration of high gain Ramman amplification, programable fabrication of longitudinal plasma structures, quasi-phase-matching relativistic harmonic generation etc.