Related papers: A Threshold for Laser-Driven Linear Particle Accel…
Intense lasers can accelerate electrons to very high energy over a short distance. Such compact accelerators have several potential applications including fast ignition, high energy physics, and radiography. Among the various schemes of…
The manuscript deals with electron acceleration by a laser pulse in a plasma with a static uniform magnetic field $B_*$. The laser pulse propagates perpendicular to the magnetic field lines with the polarization chosen such that…
In this article, we concentrate on the basic physics of relativistic plasma wave accelerators. The generation of relativistic plasma waves by intense lasers or electron beams in low-density plasmas is important in the quest for producing…
We report on the first results of laser plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultrashort mid-infrared laser pulses (\lambda= 3.9 \mu m, 100 fs, 0.25 TW), which enable near- and above-critical density interactions with moderate-density gas…
We demonstrate laser-plasma acceleration of high charge electron beams to the ~10 MeV scale using ultrashort laser pulses with as little energy as 10 mJ. This result is made possible by an extremely dense and thin hydrogen gas jet. Total…
In the extreme high intensity regime of electromagnetic (EM) waves in plasma, the acceleration process is found to be dominated by the ponderomotive acceleration (PA). While the wakefields driven by the ponderomotive force of the…
Particle acceleration at magnetized purely perpendicular relativistic shocks in electron-ion plasmas are studied by means of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Magnetized shocks with the upstream bulk Lorentz factor $\gamma_1 \gg…
We consider the acceleration of charged particles in relativistic shearing flows, with Lorentz factor up to $\Gamma_0 \sim 20$. We present numerical solutions to the particle transport equation and compare these with results from analytical…
We generate a tabletop pulsed relativistic electron beam at 100 Hz repetition rate from vacuum laser acceleration (VLA) by tightly focusing a radially polarized beam into a low-density gas. We demonstrate that strong longitudinal electric…
A plasma velocity shear layer and/or a tangential flow discontinuity provide conditions allowing for energetic particle acceleration. We review such acceleration processes acting both in non-relativistic and in relativistic flows. In…
The laser-ion acceleration in the ultra-short and ultra-intense laser-matter interactions attracts more and more interest nowadays. Since electrons gain relativistic energy from laser pulse in a period of several femtoseconds and driven…
We point out that even the most intense laser beams available today can provide only a very small fraction of the beam energy required to reach the design luminosity for a future e+e- linear collider. This fact seems to have been overlooked…
Direct laser acceleration of electrons in ion channels is investigated in a general case when the laser phase velocity is greater than (or equal to) the speed of light. Using the similarity of the equations of motion for ultra-relativistic…
We demonstrate that electrons can be efficiently accelerated to high energy in spatially non-uniform, intense laser fields. Laser non-uniformities occur when a perfect plane wave reflects off a randomly perturbed surface. By solving for…
A scheme for fast, compact, and controllable acceleration of heavy particles in vacuum is proposed, in which two counterpropagating lasers with variable frequencies drive a beat-wave structure with variable phase velocity, thus allowing for…
We examine the impact of several factors on electron acceleration by a laser pulse and the resulting electron energy gain. Specifically, we consider the role played by: 1) static longitudinal electric field; 2) static transverse electric…
A cosmic acceleration mechanism is introduced which is based on the wakefields excited by the Alfven shocks in a relativistically flowing plasma, where the energy gain per distance of a test particle is Lorentz invariant. We show that there…
The acceleration of charged particles at astrophysical collisionless shock waves is one of the best studied processes for the energization of particles to ultrarelativistic energies, required by multifrequency observations in a variety of…
In three-dimensional electromagnetic configurations that result from unstable resistive tearing modes particles can efficiently be accelerated to relativistic energies. To prove this resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations are used as…
Theoretical concepts ofn cosmic ray particle acceleration at relativistic plasma flows -- shocks and shear layers -- are reviewed. We begin with a discussion of mildly relativistic shock waves. The role of oblique field configurations and…