Related papers: Electron confinement by laser-driven azimuthal mag…
Over the last decades, significant advances in high-power laser systems have enabled rapid progress in the development of laser-driven plasma accelerators. Today, the results obtained in beam stability and reproducibility present laser…
Using a kilojoule class laser, we demonstrate for the first time that high-contrast picosecond pulses are advantageous for ion acceleration. We show that a laser pulse with optimum duration and a large focal spot accelerates electrons…
We present experimental results of vacuum laser acceleration (VLA) of electrons using radially polarized laser pulses interacting with a plasma mirror. Tightly focused radially polarized laser pulses have been proposed for electron…
With the emergence in the next few years of a new breed of high power laser facilities, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how interacting with intense laser pulses affects the bulk properties of a relativistic electron…
Laser pulses of extreme intensities ($I>10^{22}~ \mathrm{W/cm^2}$) are about to become available in the laboratory. The prepulse of such a laser can induce a plasma expansion that generates a low-density channel in near-critical gas jets.…
Electron dynamics and energization are one of the key components of magnetic field dissipation in collisionless reconnection. In 2D numerical simulations of magnetic reconnection, the main mechanism that limits the current density and…
Intense laser acceleration of ions is inherently difficult due to the velocity mismatch between laser pulses moving at the speed of light and slowly moving massive ions. Instead of directly accelerating the ions, current approaches rely on…
We study the onset of electron heating in intense laser-solid interactions and its impact on the spectral quality of radiation pressure accelerated ions in both hole boring and light sail regimes. Two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell…
Using 1D and 2D PIC simulations, we describe and model the backward ejection of electron bunches when a laser pulse reflects off an overdense plasma with a sharp density gradient on its front side. The dependence on the laser intensity and…
Laser wakefield accelerators rely on relativistically moving micron-sized plasma cavities that provide extremely high electric field >100GV/m. Here, we demonstrate transverse shaping of the plasma cavity to produce controlled sub-GeV…
The guiding and control of ultrahigh flux, femtosecond relativistic electron pulses through solid density matter is of great importance for many areas of high energy density science. Efforts so far include the use of magnetic fields…
The generation of energetic electron bunches by the interaction of a short, ultra-intense ($I>10^{19} \textrm{W/cm}^2$) laser pulse with "grating" targets has been investigated in a regime of ultra-high pulse-to-prepulse contrast…
Strongly magnetizing a plasma adds a range of waves that do not exist in unmagnetized plasmas and enlarges the laser-plasma interaction (LPI) landscape. In this paper, we use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations to investigate strongly…
We propose a new particle acceleration mechanism. Electron can be accelerated to relativistic energy within a few electromagnetic wave cycles through the mechanism which is named electromagnetic and magnetic field resonance acceleration…
We carry out 3D and 2D PIC-simulations of the expansion of a magnetized plasma that initially uniformly fills a half-space and contains a semi-cylindrical region of heated electrons elongated along the surface of the plasma boundary. This…
Electron capture processes are important in the search for new physics. In this context, a high capture rate is desired. We investigate the possibility of enhancing the electron capture rate by irradiating laser beam to ''atom''. The…
The interaction of ultra-intense laser pulses with an underdense plasma is used in laser-plasma acceleration to create compact sources of ultrashort pulses of relativistic electrons and X-rays. The accelerating structure is a plasma wave,…
We present a novel electron injection scheme for plasma wakefield acceleration. The method is based on recently proposed technique of fast electron generation via laser-solid interaction: a femtosecond laser pulse with the energy of tens of…
When the ions are accelerated by the radiation pressure of the laser pulse, their velocity can not exceed the laser group velocity, in the case when it is less than the speed of light in vacuum. This is demonstrated in two cases…
Laser-plasma accelerators produce electric fields of the order of 100 GV/m, more than 1000 times larger than radio-frequency accelerators. Thanks to this unique field strength, they appear as a promising path to generate electron beams…