Related papers: Electron acceleration in direct laser-solid intera…
The propagation of ultra intense laser pulses through matter is connected with the generation of strong moving magnetic fields in the propagation channel as well as the formation of a thin ion filament along the axis of the channel. Upon…
We briefly report on some results regarding the impact of very short and intense laser pulses on a cold, low-density plasma initially at rest, and the consequent acceleration of plasma electrons to relativistic energies. Locally and for…
Ion acceleration from gaseous targets driven by relativistic-intensity lasers was demonstrated as early as the late 90s, yet most of the experiments conducted to date have involved picosecond-duration, Nd:glass lasers operating at low…
Laser-plasma accelerators offer a compact means of producing high-energy electron beams, but their performance is fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated electrons and the plasma wave. To overcome this limitation, we…
The ability of an intense laser pulse to propagate in a classically over-critical plasma through the phenomenon of relativistic transparency is shown to facilitate the generation of strong plasma magnetic fields. Particle-in-cell…
The propagation of intense laser pulses and the generation of high energy electrons from the underdense plasmas are investigated using two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. When the ratio of the laser power and a critical power of…
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…
Accelerating particles to relativistic energies over very short distances using lasers has been a long standing goal in physics. Among the various schemes proposed for electrons, vacuum laser acceleration has attracted considerable interest…
We have investigated the role that the transverse electric field of the laser plays in the acceleration of electrons in a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) operating in the quasi-blowout regime through particle-in-cell code simulations. In…
It has recently been suggested that two counter-propagating, circularly polarized, ultra-intense lasers can induce a strong electron spin polarization at the magnetic node of the electromagnetic field that they setup. We confirm these…
We present experimental studies on ion acceleration from ultra-thin diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils irradiated by ultra-high contrast laser pulses of energy 0.7 J focussed to peak intensities of 5*10^{19} W/cm^2. A reduction in electron…
Radiative damping in plasma-based electron accelerators is analyzed. The electron dynamics under combined influence of the constant accelerating force and the classical radiation reaction force is studied. It is shown that electron…
It is observed that the interaction of an intense ultra-short laser pulse with an overdense gas jet results in the pulse collapse and the deposition of a significant part of energy in a small and well localized volume in the rising part of…
Positron creation and acceleration is one of the major challenges for constructing future lepton colliders. On the one hand, conventional technology can provide a solution, but at a prohibitive cost and scale. On the other hand,…
Structured light pulses hold significant promise for their ability to overcome dephasing in laser-wakefield accelerators, that should facilitate applications in high-energy physics and XFEL. Numerical studies have shown that sculpting a…
Experimental results, supported by precise modelling, demonstrate optimisation of a plasma-based injector with intermediate laser pulse energy ($<1$ J), corresponding to a normalised vector potential $a_0 = 2.15$, using ionisation injection…
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…
A novel regime is proposed where, employing linearly polarized laser pulses at intensities $10^{21}\textrm{Wcm}^{-2}$ as two order of magnitude lower than earlier predicted [T. Esirkepov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 175003 (2004)], ions are…
High-energy-density flows through dense matter are needed for effective progress in the production of laser-driven intense sources of energetic particles and radiation, in driving matter to extreme temperatures creating state regimes…
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…