Spatial profile of accelerated electrons from ponderomotive scattering in hydrogen cluster targets
Abstract
We study the laser-driven acceleration of electrons from overdense hydrogen clusters to energies of up to 13 MeV in laser forward direction and several hundreds of keV in an outer ring-like structure. The use of cryogenic hydrogen allows for high repetition-rate operation and examination of the influence of source parameters like temperature and gas flow. The outer ring-like structure of accelerated electrons, originating from the interaction, that is robust against the change of laser and target parameters can be observed for low electron densities of ca. 310 cm. For higher electron densities, an additional central spot of electrons in the laser forward direction can be observed. Utilizing 3D-PIC simulations, it is revealed that both electron populations mainly stem from ponderomotive scattering.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2110.12639,
title = {Spatial profile of accelerated electrons from ponderomotive scattering in hydrogen cluster targets},
author = {B. Aurand and L. Reichwein and K. M. Schwind and E. Aktan and M. Cerchez and V. Kaymak and L. Lessmann and R. Prasad and J. Thomas and T. Toncian and A. Khoukaz and A. Pukhov and O. Willi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.12639},
year = {2022}
}