Drift Lagrangian for relativistic particle in intense laser field

Abstract

The Lagrangian and Hamiltonian functions describing average motion of a relativistic particle under the action of a slightly inhomogeneous intense laser field are obtained. In weak low-frequency background fields, such a particle on average drifts with an effective, relativistically invariant mass, which depends on the laser intensity. The essence of the proposed ponderomotive formulation is presented in a physically intuitive and mathematically simple form, yet represents a powerful tool for studying various nonlinear phenomena caused by interaction of currently available smooth ultra-intense laser pulses with plasmas.

References in corpus (1)

• Relativistic ponderomotive force, uphill acceleration, and transition to chaos

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Positive and negative effective mass of classical particles in oscillatory and static fields
• Ponderomotive dynamics of waves in quasiperiodically modulated media
• Relativistic ponderomotive Hamiltonian of a Dirac particle in a vacuum laser field
• Ponderomotive acceleration of hot electrons in tenuous plasmas
• Asymptotic Theory of the Ponderomotive Dynamics of an Electron Driven by a Relativistically Intense Focused Electromagnetic Envelope