Electron acceleration driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses

Abstract

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 significant acceleration takes place is greatly reduced by using a tighter focus. Moreover, electrons accelerated by tightly focused single-cycle laser pulses may reach around 80% of the theoretical energy gain limit, about twice the value previously reported with few-cycle paraxial pulses. Our results demonstrate that the direct acceleration of electrons in vacuum is well within reach of the current laser technology.

3 pages. Accepted for publication in Optics Letters

References in corpus (4)

• Direct acceleration of an electron in infinite vacuum by a pulsed radially-polarized laser beam
• Exact nonparaxial beams of the scalar Helmholtz equation
• Two-Color-Laser-Driven Direct Electron Acceleration in Infinite Vacuum
• A Threshold for Laser-Driven Linear Particle Acceleration in Unbounded Vacuum

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Laser-Induced Linear Electron Acceleration in Free Space
• Femtosecond 240-keV electron pulses from direct laser acceleration in a low-density gas
• Fields of an ultrashort tightly-focused laser pulse
• On the validity of the paraxial approximation for electron acceleration with radially polarized laser beams
• On the importance of frequency-dependent beam parameters for vacuum acceleration with few-cycle radially-polarized laser beams
• Influence of longitudinal chromatism on vacuum acceleration by intense radially polarized laser beams
• An improved beam waist formula for ultrashort, tightly-focused linearly, radially, and azimuthally polarized laser pulses in free space
• Direct Laser Ion Acceleration and Above-Threshold Ionization at Intensities from $10^{21}$ W/cm${}^2$ to $3\times 10^{23}$ W/cm${}^2$
• On beam models and their paraxial approximation
• Cylindrically Polarized Nondiffracting Optical Pulses
• MeV femtosecond electron pulses from direct-field acceleration in low density atomic gases
• Particle acceleration in sub-cycle optical cells
• Discontinuities in the Electromagnetic Fields of Vortex Beams in the Complex Source/Sink Model
• Electromagnetic fields of an ultra-short tightly-focused radially-polarized laser pulse
• Wakefield generation and electron acceleration via propagation of radially polarized laser pulses in homogeneous plasma
• Ambient air plasma acceleration in tightly-focused ultrashort infrared laser beams
• Electron acceleration in vacuum by ultrashort and tightly focused radially polarized laser pulses