Ultrahigh charge electron beams from laser-irradiated solid surface

Abstract

Compact acceleration of a tightly collimated relativistic electron beam with high charge from a laser-plasma interaction has many unique applications. However, currently the well-known schemes, including laser wakefield acceleration from gases and vacuum laser acceleration from solids, often produce electron beams either with low charge or with large divergence angles. In this work, we report the generation of highly collimated electron beams with a divergence angle of a few degrees, quasi-monoenergetic spectra peaked at the MeV level, and extremely high charge ($\sim$100 nC) via a powerful sub-ps laser pulse interacting with a solid target in grazing incidence. Particle-in-cell simulations illustrate a new direct laser acceleration scenario, in which the self-filamentation is triggered in a large-scale near-critical-density plasma and electron bunches are accelerated periodically and collimated by the ultra-intense electromagnetic field. The energy density of such electron beams in high-Z materials reaches to $\sim 10^{12}J/{\mathrm{m}}^3$, making it a promising tool to drive warm or even hot dense matter states.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Enhancement of electron energy to multi-GeV regime by a dual-stage laser-wakefield accelerator pumped by petawatt laser pulses
• Beam loading in the nonlinear regime of plasma-based acceleration
• Vacuum laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using plasma mirror injectors
• Synergistic Laser Wakefield/Direct Laser Acceleration in the Plasma Bubble Regime
• Mixing of Xi_c and Xi_c' Baryons

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Production of Highly Polarized Positron Beams via Helicity Transfer from Polarized Electrons in a Strong Laser Field
• Hybrid Stimulated Raman Scattering -- Two Plasmon Decay Instability and 3/2 Harmonic in Steep-Gradient Femtosecond Plasmas
• Generation of arbitrarily polarized muon pairs via polarized $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ collision
• Collimated $\gamma$-flash emission along the target surface irradiated by a laser at non-grazing incidence