Long-lasting plasma density structures utilizing tailored density profiles

Journal article, 2026

Using fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate the stability and performance of autoresonant plasma beat-wave excitation in plasmas with tailored density profiles. We show that a prescribed spatial variation of the background density sustains continuous phase locking between the driving laser beat and the excited plasma mode, thereby enabling precise control of the shape and group velocity of the plasma wavepacket and providing an alternative to frequency chirping of the drive lasers. The density-gradient scale is found to govern the nonlinear autoresonant growth, and the attainable saturation amplitude can exceed the classical Rosenbluth-Liu prediction and, for appropriate laser intensities, approach the nonrelativistic wave-breaking limit. We show that a four-laser configuration in a steep parabolic density profile can generate a specially confined two-phase quasi-periodic plasma lattice. The generation of such structures may lead to novel applications in plasma photonics.