Ultrashort high energy electron bunches from tunable surface plasma waves driven with laser wavefront rotation

Abstract

We propose to use ultra-high intensity laser pulses with wavefront rotation (WFR) to produce short, ultra-intense surface plasma waves (SPW) on grating targets for electron acceleration. Combining a smart grating design with optimal WFR conditions identified through simple analytical modeling and particle-in-cell simulation allows to decrease the SPW duration (down to few optical cycles) and increase its peak amplitude. In the relativistic regime, for $I{\lambda }_0^2=3.4\times 10^{19}W/c{\mathrm{m}}^2\mu {\mathrm{m}}^2$, such SPW are found to accelerate high-charge (few 10's of pC), high-energy (up to 70 MeV) and ultra-short (few fs) electron bunches.

References in corpus (8)

• Theory of surface plasmons and surface-plasmon polaritons
• SMILEI: a collaborative, open-source, multi-purpose particle-in-cell code for plasma simulation
• Attosecond Lighthouses
• Evidence of resonant surface wave excitation in the relativistic regime through measurements of proton acceleration from grating targets
• Electron acceleration by relativistic surface plasmons in laser-grating interaction
• Surface plasmons in superintense laser-solid interactions
• Extensive study of electron acceleration by relativistic surface plasmons
• Relativistic surface-plasmon enhanced harmonic generation from gratings

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Surface Plasmon-Driven Electron and Proton Acceleration without Grating Coupling
• Key parameters for surface plasma wave excitation in the ultra-high intensity regime