Electron acceleration driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses
Accelerator Physics
2012-11-20 v1 Optics
Abstract
Exact closed-form solutions to Maxwell's equations are used to investigate the acceleration of electrons in vacuum driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses. We show that the threshold power above which significant acceleration takes place is greatly reduced by using a tighter focus. Moreover, electrons accelerated by tightly focused single-cycle laser pulses may reach around 80% of the theoretical energy gain limit, about twice the value previously reported with few-cycle paraxial pulses. Our results demonstrate that the direct acceleration of electrons in vacuum is well within reach of the current laser technology.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1204.5726,
title = {Electron acceleration driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses},
author = {Vincent Marceau and Alexandre April and Michel Piché},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1204.5726},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
3 pages. Accepted for publication in Optics Letters