Wakes and Other Non-linear Effects Observed When Ultra-Short Ultra-High-Power Microwave Pulses Interact with Neutral Gas and Plasma

The non-linear interaction between powerful short laser pulse with plasma and neutral gas has stimulated enormous interest during the last few decades since plasma as a medium, without limiting of electrical breakdown, is capable of accelerating charged particles to extremely high energy at a very short distance by the plasma wakefield compare with the conventional accelerators. The interaction of ultra-high-power, ultra-short microwave pulses with plasma and gas also gains considerable interest since its scaled the laser-induced plasma wakefield dynamics spatially from micrometer to centimeter, temporally from femtosecond to nanosecond. In this chapter, we show a series of studies of the non-linear effect between ultra-short (sub-nanosecond), ultra-high-power (several hundreds of megawatts) microwave pulses with neutral gas and plasma such as self-channeling of high-power microwave pulse through gas and plasma, microwave-driven plasma wakefield formation, and complete absorption of such powerful microwave pulse in plasma.