Related papers: Spontaneous emergence of non-planar electron orbit…
We examine a regime in which a linearly-polarized laser pulse with relativistic intensity irradiates a sub-critical plasma for much longer than the characteristic electron response time. A steady-state channel is formed in the plasma in…
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 long laser beam propagating through an underdense plasma produces a positively charged ion channel by expelling plasma electrons in the transverse direction. We consider the dynamics of a test electron in a resulting two-dimensional…
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 free electron can temporarily gain a very significant amount of energy if it is overrun by an intense electromagnetic wave. In principle, this process would permit large enhancements in the center-of-mass energy of electron-electron,…
A planar laser pulse propagating in vacuum can exhibit an extremely large ponderomotive force. This force, however, cannot impart net energy to an electron: As the pulse overtakes the electron, the initial impulse from its rising edge is…
In addition to the ponderomotive acceleration of highly relativistic electrons at interaction of very short and very intense laser pulses, a further acceleration is derived from the interaction of these electron beams with the spontaneous…
In laser-solid interactions, electrons may be generated and subsequently accelerated to energies of the order-of-magnitude of the ponderomotive limit, with the underlying process dominated by direct laser acceleration. Breaking this limit,…
Circularly polarized colliding laser pulses can create abundant electron-positron pair plasma [A. R. Bell and J. G. Kirk, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 200403 (2008)], which scattering the incoming electromagnetic waves can prevent them from…
The dynamics of electric field generation and radial acceleration of ions by a laser pulse of relativistic intensity propagating in an underdense plasma has been investigated using an one-dimensional electrostatic, ponderomotive model…
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…
Relativistic flying mirrors in plasmas are realized as thin dense electron (or electron-ion) layers accelerated by high-intensity electromagnetic waves to velocities close to the speed of light in vacuum. The reflection of an…
We study the direct acceleration of a free electron in infinite vacuum along the axis of a pulsed radially-polarized laser beam. We find that net energy transfer from laser pulse to electron is maximized with the tightest focusing. We show…
A laser-driven azimuthal plasma magnetic field is known to facilitate electron energy gain from the irradiating laser pulse. The enhancement is due to changes in the orientation between the laser electric field and electron velocity caused…
Turbulence is often invoked to explain the origin of nonthermal particles in space and astrophysical plasmas. By means of 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate that turbulence in low-$\beta$ plasmas ($\beta$ is the…
The dynamics of electron injection in the direct laser acceleration (DLA) regime was investigated by means of three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and theoretical analysis. It is shown that when an ultra-intense laser pulse…
Relativistic electrons are easily generated by self-injection when an intense laser drives a wakefield in a plasma, giving rise to wide electron energy distributions. Several mechanisms involving additional laser beams or different gas…
We propose a new approach to high-intensity laser-driven electron acceleration in a plasma. Here, we demonstrate that a plasma wave generated by a stimulated forward-scattering of an incident laser pulse can be in a longest acceleration…
The dynamics of relativistic electrons interacting with a laser pulse in a plasma wave has been investigated theoretically and numerically based on the classical Landau-Lifshitz equation. There exists a convergent trajectory of electrons…
We revisit the exact microscopic equations (in differential, and equivalent integral form) ruling a relativistic cold plasma after the plane-wave Ansatz, without customary approximations. We show that in the Eulerian description the motion…