Influence of longitudinal chromatism on vacuum acceleration by intense radially polarized laser beams

Abstract

We report with single particle simulations that longitudinal chromatism, a commonly occuring spatio-temporal coupling in ultrashort laser pulses, can have a significant influence in the longitudinal acceleration of electrons via high-power, tightly-focused radially polarized laser beams. This effect can be advantageous, and even more-so when combined with small values of temporal chirp. However, the effect can also be highly destructive when the magnitude and sign of the longitudinal chromatism is not ideal, even at very small magnitudes. This motivates the characterization and understanding of the driving laser pulses, and further study of the influence of similar low-order spatial-temporal couplings on such acceleration.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures. Updates: title update, small changes made, typos corrected, plasma-mirror results removed, off-axis results added

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Accelerating and decelerating space-time optical wave packets in free space
• Free-space optical delay line using space-time wave packets
• Interaction of ultraintense radially-polarized laser pulses with plasma mirrors
• On the importance of frequency-dependent beam parameters for vacuum acceleration with few-cycle radially-polarized laser beams
• Focused fields of ultrashort radially-polarized laser pulses having low-order spatio-temporal couplings
• Ultrashort laser pulses with chromatic astigmatism