Sub-femtosecond wakefield injector and accelerator based on an undulating plasma bubble controlled by a laser phase

Abstract

We demonstrate that a long-propagating plasma bubble executing undulatory motion can be produced in the wake of two co-propagating laser pulses: a near-single-cycle injector and a multi-cycle driver. When the undulation amplitude exceeds the analytically derived threshold, highly-localized injections of plasma electrons into the bubble are followed by their long-distance acceleration. While the locations of the injection regions are controlled by the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of the injector pulse, the mono-energetic spectrum of the accelerated sub-femtosecond high-charge electron bunches is shown to be nearly CEP-independent