Excitation of multiple wakefields by short laser pulses in dense plasmas

Abstract

We present a theoretical investigation of the excitation of multiple electrostatic wakefields by the ponderomotive force of a short electromagnetic pulse propagating through a dense plasma. It is found that the inclusion of the quantum statistical pressure and quantum electron tunneling effects can qualitatively change the classical behavior of the wakefield. In addition to the well known plasma oscillation wakefield, with a wavelength of the order of the electron skin depth, which in a dense plasma is of the order of several nanometers, wakefields in dense plasmas with a shorter wavelength are also excited. The wakefields can trap electrons and accelerate them to extremely high energies over nanoscales.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Nonlinear collective effects in photon-photon and photon-plasma interactions
• Generating multi-GeV electron bunches using single stage laser wakefield acceleration in a 3D nonlinear regime
• Physics of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars
• Dense plasmas in astrophysics: from giant planets to neutron stars
• New Quantum Limits in Plasmonic Devices