Electron Beam Characteristics from Laser-Driven Wave Breaking

The generation of high-current $(>\mathrm{kA})$, relativistic electron beams from the wave breaking of plasma waves generated by a highly nonlinear interaction between Raman scattering, self-heating, and self-focusing of high-power $(>5\mathrm{}\mathrm{TW})$, short-pulse $(<1\mathrm{}\mathrm{ps})$ lasers is examined in detail using a fully explicit particle-in-cell model. The resulting beams have a continuous energy spread with a maximum energy exceeding simple dephasing estimates. For a 5 J laser, a total of $2\times {10}^{11}$ electrons are accelerated, but $2\times {10}^8$ electrons are at $50\pm 1\mathrm{MeV}$ with a normalized emittance of $13\pi \mathrm{mm}\mathrm{mrad}$.