Electron acceleration in an ultraintense-laser-illuminated capillary.

An ultraintense laser injected a 10 J of power at 1.053 microm in 0.5 ps into a glass capillary of 1 cm long and 60 microm in diameter and accelerated plasma electrons to 100 MeV. One- and two-dimensional particle codes describe wakefields with 10 GV/m gradient excited behind the laser pulse, which are guided by a plasma density channel far beyond the Rayleigh range. The blueshift of the laser spectrum supports that a plasma of 10(16) cm(-3) is inside the capillary. A bump at the high energy tail suggests the electron trapping in the wakefield.