Plasma volume holograms for focusing and mode conversion of ultraintense laser pulses

Beating of a broad laser reference beam with a quite general focused object beam inside a plasma volume generates a dynamic plasma hologram. Both beams may be of moderate intensity. The volume hologram can be read out by an ultraintense main beam (of similar structure as the reference beam) producing an object beam replica. For the latter, intensity in the focus may become extremely large. As an application, the possibility of a read-out focused Gaussian laser pulse with intensity of several 10(19) W/cm(2) in focus is shown by three-dimensional numerical simulations. Besides the focusing possibility, the hologram may also act as a mode converter for high-intensity laser pulses. Generating a plasma hologram with a focused Laguerre-Gaussian object beam results in a staggered plasma density grating, allowing the production of high-intensity vortex beam replica.