Vacuum acceleration of electrons in a dynamic laser pulse

Abstract

A planar laser pulse propagating in vacuum can exhibit an extremely large ponderomotive force. This force, however, cannot impart net energy to an electron: As the pulse overtakes the electron, the initial impulse from its rising edge is completely undone by an equal and opposite impulse from its trailing edge. Here we show that planar-like "flying focus" pulses can break this symmetry, imparting relativistic energies to electrons. The intensity peak of a flying focus-a moving focal point resulting from a chirped laser pulse focused by a chromatic lens-can travel at any subluminal velocity, forwards or backwards. As a result, an electron can gain enough momentum in the rising edge of the intensity peak to outrun and avoid the trailing edge. Accelerating the intensity peak can further boost the momentum gain. Theory and simulations demonstrate that these dynamic intensity peaks can backwards accelerate electrons to the MeV energies required for radiation and electron diffraction probes of high energy density materials.

References in corpus (8)

• Generating multi-GeV electron bunches using single stage laser wakefield acceleration in a 3D nonlinear regime
• All-optical Compton gamma-ray source
• Vacuum laser acceleration of relativistic electrons using plasma mirror injectors
• Direct laser acceleration of electrons in free-space
• Photon Acceleration in a Flying Focus
• Ionization waves of arbitrary velocity driven by a flying focus
• Gigavolt bound-free transitions driven by extreme light
• A nonlinear plasma retroreflector for single pulse Compton backscattering

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Nonlinear Thomson scattering with ponderomotive control
• Spatiotemporal control of laser intensity through cross-phase modulation
• Exact solutions for the electromagnetic fields of a flying focus
• Nonlinear spatiotemporal control of laser intensity
• Laser-plasma acceleration beyond wave breaking
• Optical Shock-Enhanced Self-Photon Acceleration
• Signatures of vacuum birefringence in low-power flying focus pulses
• Focused fields of ultrashort radially-polarized laser pulses having low-order spatio-temporal couplings
• Charged particle beam transport in a flying focus pulse with orbital angular momentum
• Progress in relativistic laser-plasma interaction with kilotesla-level applied magnetic fields
• Unforeseen advantage of looser focusing in vacuum laser acceleration
• Ultrashort laser pulses with chromatic astigmatism
• Radiation Reaction Enhancement in Flying Focus Pulses
• Enhanced quantum radiation with flying-focus laser pulses
• High-charge relativistic electrons by vacuum laser acceleration from plasma mirrors using flying focus pulses