Forty articles have been recently published in EPJD as contributions to the topical issue Theory and applications of the Vlasov equation. The aim of this topical issue was to provide a forum for the presentation of a broad variety of scientific resul
ts involving the Vlasov equation. In this editorial, after some introductory notes, a brief account is given of the main points addressed in these papers and of the perspectives they open.
In this paper we discuss the bandwidth enhancement that can be achieved in multi-Joule optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) systems exploiting the tunability of parametric amplification. In particular, we consider a pair of single p
ass amplifiers based on potassium dideuterium phosphate (DKDP), pumped by the second harmonic of Nd:glass and tuned to amplify adjacent regions of the signal spectrum. We demonstrate that a bandwidth enhancement up to 50% is possible in two configurations; in the first case, one of the two amplifiers is operated near its non-collinear broadband limit; to allow for effective recombination and recompression of the outgoing signals this configuration requires filtering and phase manipulation of the spectral tail of the amplified pulses. In the second case, effective recombination can be achieved simply by spectral filtering: in this configuration, the optimization of the parameters of the amplifiers (pulse, crystal orientation and crystal length) does not follow the recipes of non-collinear OPCPA.
