Toward resonant laser-wakefield excitation with a pulse train generated by a delay mask

My PhD project is focused on the development of a novel optical system (the delay mask) to generate a train of ultrashort laser pulses to be used in the ReMPI laser-plasma acceleration scheme, proposed by the ILIL group in the context of the European infrastructure EuPRAXIA. It aims to the acceleration of GeV-scale, high-quality electron bunches using existing 100 TWclass high-power lasers, via the combination of multi-pulse resonant excitation and two-color injection. As a first step toward the experimental implementation of ReMPI, my PhD project tackles the issue of the generation of trains of laser pulses starting by a single, high power laser pulse, to drive resonant wakefield excitation in a plasma, reviewing existing optical methods and introducing a recently proposed approach based on a delay mask. Tools developed to model and characterize experimentally trains of ultrashort pulses generated with a delay mask are described in details in my thesis. The simulation of the resonant excitation achieved by the pulse train I experimentally characterized showed a clear experimental signature related to the resonant excitation condition.