Modern ultrafast lasers deliver pulses with powers from a few terawatts to multi-petawatts for studies and applications of relativistic plasmas. In particular, plasma accelerators find applications in radiobiology and advanced imaging, and pave the path for experimental observations of strong-field quantum electrodynamics and future lepton colliders. Shaping the waveform of laser pulses allows one to optically profile the on-axis intensity distribution along extended focal depths and to control the group velocity. This appears extremely promising for laser–plasma accelerators, where diffraction and dispersion of the laser driver fundamentally limit the gain and overall efficiency. Such studies are now actively pursued by a number of leading teams in laser–plasma interactions and high-power laser science. In this talk, we review the basics of spatiotemporal beam shaping [1], and its implementation in laser–plasma acceleration [2,3], and discuss the main challenges along this path [4,5]. We also present our recent numerical and experimental results on laser optical shaping and its applications [4,5].

 

[1] K Oubrerie, IA Andriyash, R Lahaye, S Smartsev, V Malka, C Thaury. Axiparabola: a new tool for high-intensity optics. Journal of Optics, 24(4):045503, 2022.

[2] C Caizergues, S Smartsev, V Malka, and C Thaury. Phase-locked laser-wakefield electron acceleration. Nature Photonics, 14(8):475, 2020.

[3] K Oubrerie, A Leblanc, O Kononenko, et al. Controlled acceleration of gev electron beams in an all-optical plasma waveguide. Light: Science & Applications, 11(1):180, 2022.

[4] J Touguet, IA Andriyash, R Lahaye, G Chapelant, J Gautier, L Rovige, C Thaury. Advanced Shaping of Quasi-Bessel Beams for High-Intensity Applications, arXiv:2601.19554 (2026)

[5] J Touguet, IA Andriyash, L Rovige, C Thaury. Ultra-Short flying-focus, arXiv:2603.24734 (2026)