Journal of Plasma Physics

Table of Contents - August 2012 - Volume 78, Special Issue 04 (Progress in Laser Acceleration of Particles)  

Papers

Towards Sub-TeV electron beams driven by ultra-short, ultra-intense laser pulses

WEI-MIN WANGa1, ZHENG-MING SHENGa1a2, SHIGEO KAWATAa3, CHUN-YANG ZHENGa4, YU-TONG LIa1, LI-MING CHENa1, QUAN-LI DONGa1, XIN LUa1, JING-LONG MAa1 and JIE ZHANGa1a2

a1 Beijing National Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, CAS, Beijing 100190, China (hbwwm1@iphy.ac.cn)

a2 Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (Ministry of Education) and Department of Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

a3 Graduate School of Engineering, Utsunomiya University, 7-1-2 Yohtoh, Utsunomiya 321-8585, Japan

a4 Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing 100094, China

Abstract

Energetic electron beam generation from a thin foil target by the ponderomotive force of an ultra-intense circularly polarized laser pulse is investigated. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations show that laser pulses with intensity of 1022–1023 Wcm−2 generate about 1–10 GeV electron beams, in agreement with the prediction of one-dimensional theory. When the laser intensity is at 1024–1025 Wcm−2, the beam energy obtained from PIC simulations is lower than the values predicted by the theory. The radiation damping effect is considered, which is found to become important for the laser intensity higher than 1025 Wcm−2. The effect of laser focus positions is also discussed.

(Received October 31 2011)

(Accepted April 02 2012)

(Online publication May 04 2012)