Production of hollow cylindrical plasmas for laser guiding in acceleration experiments

One of the major tasks for the progress of laser acceleration of electrons in plasmas is the guiding of focused pulses along path lengths much larger than the depth of focus. We have tested experimentally the production of hollow plasmas in gas to be used as guiding medium. We induced optical breakdown in Helium with a nanosecond laser pulse similar to the Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) pedestal of a powerful ultrashort laser pulse. The plasma produced in this way was carefully characterized by high resolution interferometry. Plasma channels several millimeters in length whose density, depth and width match the requirements for an efficient guiding have been obtained. Channels with a variety of parameters can be created according to the well-known dynamics of the plasmas produced by optical breakdown.