Related papers: Vacuum acceleration of electrons in a dynamic lase…
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…
Relativistic electron beams produced by intense lasers over short distances have important applications in high energy density physics and medical technologies. Vacuum laser acceleration with plasma mirrors injectors has garnered…
We consider the acceleration of electrons in vacuum by means of the circularly-polirized electromagnetic wave, propagating along a magnetic field. We show that the electron energy growth, when using ultra-short and ultra-intense laser…
The extreme electric fields created in high-intensity laser-plasma interactions could generate energetic ions far more compactly than traditional accelerators. Despite this promise, laser-plasma accelerators have remained stagnant at…
Exact closed-form solutions to Maxwell's equations are used to investigate the acceleration of electrons in vacuum driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses. We show that the threshold power above which…
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,…
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,…
Exact closed-form solutions to Maxwell's equations are used to investigate electron acceleration driven by radially polarized laser beams in the nonparaxial and ultrashort pulse regime. Besides allowing for higher energy gains, such beams…
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 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…
An electron irradiated by a linearly polarized relativistic intensity laser pulse in a cylindrical plasma channel can gain significant energy from the pulse. The laser electric and magnetic fields drive electron oscillations in a plane…
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…
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 emission of a photon by an electron in an intense laser field is one of the most fundamental processes in electrodynamics and underlies the many applications that utilize high-energy photon beams. This process is typically studied for…
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…
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…
An ultra-short (about 30 fs) petawatt laser pulse focused with a wide focal spot (about 100 microns) in a rarefied plasma (electron density of order 10^{17} per cm^3) excites a nonlinear plasma wakefield which can accelerate injected…
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…
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…
Direct laser acceleration (DLA) offers a compact source of high-charge, energetic electrons for generating secondary radiation or neutrons. While DLA in high-density plasma optimizes the energy transfer from a laser pulse to electrons, it…