Related papers: Optimizing direct laser-driven electron accelerati…
Laser driven particle acceleration has shown remarkable progresses in generating multi-GeV electron bunches and 10s of MeV ion beams based on high-power laser facilities. Intense laser pulse offers the acceleration field of 1012 Volt per…
The interaction of micro- and nano-structured target surfaces with high-power laser pulses is being widely investigated for its unprecedented absorption efficiency. We have developed vertically aligned metallic micro-pillar arrays for…
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…
Using a laser plasma accelerator, experiments with a 80 TW and 30 fs laser pulse demonstrated quasi-monoenergetic electron spectra with maximum energy over 0.4 GeV. This is achieved using a supersonic He gas jet and a sharp density ramp…
The process of nuclear excitation by electron capture in plasma environments generated by the interaction of ultra-strong optical lasers with solid-state samples is investigated theoretically. With the help of a plasma model we perform a…
An electron beam has gained a maximum energy of 9 GeV per particle in a 1.3 m-long electron beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator. The amount of charge accelerated in the spectral peak was 28.3 pC, and the root-mean-square energy spread…
The possibility of achieving highly selective excitation of low metastable states of hydrogen and helium atoms by using short laser pulses with reasonable parameters is demonstrated theoretically. Interactions of atoms with the laser field…
We use the Los Alamos VPIC code to investigate particle acceleration in relativistic, unmagnetized, collisionless electron-ion plasmas. We run our simulations both with a realistic proton-to-electron mass ratio m_p/m_e = 1836, as well as…
We consider the possibility of experimental verification of vacuum e^+e^- pair creation at the focus of two counter-propagating optical laser beams with intensities 10^{20}-10^{22} W/cm^2, achievable with present-day petawatt lasers, and…
We propose a new approach based on an all-optical set-up for generating relativistic polarized electron beams via vortex Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) laser-driven wakefield acceleration. Using a pre-polarized gas target, we find that the topology…
Propagation of a tightly focused high-power ultrashort laser pulse in an optical medium is usually substantially influenced by the medium optical nonlinearity that can noticeably affect the laser pulse parameters around the nonlinear focus…
All-optical controlled injection and acceleration of electrons in a laser wakefield has recently been achieved (Faure et al, Nature v. 444 p. 737, 2006). Injection was made using a second counterpropagating laser pulse with the same…
We report on an experimental demonstration of efficient neutron generation based on direct laser acceleration in microwire-array targets irradiated by ultrashort (tens of femtoseconds) laser pulses. The optimal array period was identified,…
Laser-plasma acceleration produces ultrashort, high-brightness ion beams reaching tens of MeV, yet their large divergence and broad energy spread require dedicated capture elements for beam transport. Using laser-accelerated protons from…
Theoretical investigations are presented, and their results are discussed, of the laser acceleration of a single electron by a chirped pulse. Fields of the pulse are modeled by simple plane-wave oscillations and a $\cos^2$ envelope. The…
Proton acceleration by using a 620-TW, 18-J laser pulse of peak intensity of $5\times 10^{21}$ W/cm$^{2}$ irradiating a disk target is examined using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is shown that protons are accelerated…
We examine the impact of the ion dynamics on laser-driven electron acceleration in an initially empty channel irradiated by an ultra-high intensity laser pulse with $I > 10^{22}$ W/cm$^2$. The negative charge of the accelerated electrons…
Propagation distances of intense laser pulses and high-charge electron beams through the plasma are, respectively, limited by diffraction and self-deceleration. This imposes severe constraints on the performance of the two major advanced…
The wake field excitation in an unmagnetized plasma by a multi-petawatt, femtosecond, pancake-shaped laser pulse is described both analytically and numerically in the regime with ultrarelativistic electron jitter velocities, when the plasma…
There is a growing demand for X-ray Free-electron lasers (FELs) in various science fields, in particular for those with short pulses, larger photon fluxes and shorter wavelengths. The level of X-ray power and the pulse energy depend on the…