Related papers: Vacuum laser acceleration of super-ponderomotive e…
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…
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…
Acceleration of electrons in vacuum directly by intense laser fields, often termed vacuum laser acceleration (VLA), holds great promise for the creation of compact sources of high-charge, ultrashort, relativistic electron bunches. However,…
Compact laser-driven accelerators are versatile and powerful tools of unarguable relevance on societal grounds for the diverse purposes of science, health, security, and technology because they bring enormous practicality to…
Propagation of short and ultra-intense laser pulses in a semi-infinite space of overdense hydrogen plasma is analyzed via fully-relativistic, real geometry particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations including radiation friction. The relativistic…
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…
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…
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 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…
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 influence of laser frequency on laser-driven ion acceleration is investigated by means of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. When ultrashort intense laser pulse at higher harmonic frequency irradiates a thin solid foil, the…
In the effort of achieving high-energetic ion beams from the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with a plasma, volumetric acceleration mechanisms beyond Target Normal Sheath Acceleration have gained attention. A relativisticly intense…
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…
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…
The direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons in underdense plasmas can provide 100s of nC of electrons accelerated to near-GeV energies using currently available lasers. Here we demonstrate the key role of electron transverse…
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.…
Linear acceleration in free space is a topic that has been studied for over 20 years, and its ability to eventually produce high-quality, high energy multi-particle bunches has remained a subject of great interest. Arguments can certainly…
A new electron acceleration mechanism is identified that develops when a relativistically intense laser irradiates the wedge of an over-dense plasma. This induces a diffracted electromagnetic wave with a significant longitudinal electric…
We present an experimental demonstration of the efficient acceleration of electrons beyond 60 MeV using micro-channel plasma targets. We employed a high-contrast, 2.5 J, 32 fs short pulse laser interacting with a 5 \mu m inner diameter, 300…
We propose a new approach to high-intensity relativistic 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 the longest…