Charged Particle Acceleration by Lasers in Plasmas

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Several physical processes of laser electron acceleration in plasmas are revisited. A laser beam can drive plasma waves which in turn can accelerate resonant electrons. If these plasma waves can reach amplitude limited only by wave breaking alone, then the corresponding accelerating gradient in the plasma wave is of the order of electron rest mass energy per plasma skin depth, typically about GEV per centimeter. This is several orders of magnitudes higher than the conventional RF field gradient, giving rise to the possibility of compact accelerators needed for high energy physics research as well as medical and other applications. The chirped short pulse laser, with intensity exceeding the threshold for relativistic self focusing, can generate ion bubble in its wake by expelling electrons. The electrons at the bubble boundary, surge toward the stagnation point and pile up there. As the pile acquires a critical size, these electrons are injected into the bubble and accelerated by the combined fields of ion space charge and the plasma wave to Gev in energy. Most remarkably these electrons are bunched in phase space while being accelerated to high energy, resulting in near mono‐energetic electron beam of high beam quality, with narrow energy spread. We review also other processes related to laser electron acceleration, such as acceleration in plasma wave assisted by ponderomotive force and betatron acceleration.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: