Generation of Ultrabrilliant Polarized Attosecond Electron Bunches via Dual-Wake Injection.

Laser wakefield acceleration is paving the way for the next generation of electron accelerators, for their own sake and as radiation sources. A controllable dual-wake injection scheme is put forward here to generate an ultrashort triplet electron bunch with high brightness and high polarization, employing a radially polarized laser as a driver. We find that the dual wakes can be driven by both transverse and longitudinal components of the laser field in the quasiblowout regime, sustaining the laser-modulated wakefield which facilitates the subcycle and transversely split injection of the triplet bunch. Polarization of the triplet bunch can be highly preserved due to the laser-assisted collective spin precession and the noncanceled transverse spins. In our three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, the triplet electron bunch, with duration about 500 as, six-dimensional brightness exceeding 10^{14} A/m^{2}/0.1% and polarization over 80%, can be generated using a few-terawatt laser. Such an electron bunch could play an essential role in many applications, such as ultrafast imaging, nuclear structure and high-energy physics studies, and the operation of coherent radiation sources.

Electron acceleration by a radially-polarized laser pulse in a plasma micro-channel: erratum.

Three of the headings of Table 1, which have been switched by mistake in our paper, are corrected here. The rest of the paper, including all results and conclusions, remain intact.

Electron acceleration by a radially-polarized laser pulse in a plasma micro-channel.

Encouraged by recent advances in radially-polarized laser technology, simulations have been performed of electron acceleration by a tightly-focused, ultra-short pulse in a parabolic plasma micro-channel. Milli-joule laser pulses, generated at kHz repetition rates, are shown to produce electron bunches of MeV energy, pC charge, low emittance and low divergence. The pivotal role played by the channel length in controlling the process is demonstrated, and the roles of direct and wakefield acceleration are distinguished.

Fields of a Bessel-Bessel light bullet of arbitrary order in an under-dense plasma.

Considerable theoretical and experimental work has lately been focused on waves localized in time and space. In optics, waves of that nature are often referred to as light bullets. The most fascinating feature of light bullets is their propagation without appreciable distortion by diffraction or dispersion. Here, analytic expressions for the fields of an ultra-short, tightly-focused and arbitrary-order Bessel pulse are derived and discussed. Propagation in an under-dense plasma, responding linearly to the fields of the pulse, is assumed throughout. The derivation stems from wave equations satisfied by the vector and scalar potentials, themselves following from the appropriate Maxwell equations and linked by the Lorentz gauge. It is demonstrated that the fields represent well a pulse of axial extension, L, and waist radius at focus, w0, both of the order of the central wavelength λ0. As an example, to lowest approximation, the pulse of order l = 2 is shown to propagate undistorted for many centimeters, in vacuum as well as in the plasma. As such, the pulse behaves like a "light bullet" and is termed a "Bessel-Bessel bullet of arbitrary order". The field expressions will help to better understand light bullets and open up avenues for their utility in potential applications.

Feasibility of electron cyclotron autoresonance acceleration by a short terahertz pulse.

A vacuum auto-resonance accelerator scheme for electrons, which employs terahertz radiation and currently available magnetic fields, is suggested. Based on numerical simulations, parameter values, which could make the scheme experimentally feasible, are identified and discussed.

Dense monoenergetic proton beams from chirped laser-plasma interaction.

Interaction of a frequency-chirped laser pulse with single protons and a hydrogen gas target is studied analytically and by means of particle-in-cell simulations, respectively. The feasibility of generating ultraintense (10(7) particles per bunch) and phase-space collimated beams of protons (energy spread of about 1%) is demonstrated. Phase synchronization of the protons and the laser field, guaranteed by the appropriate chirping of the laser pulse, allows the particles to gain sufficient kinetic energy (around 250 MeV) required for such applications as hadron cancer therapy, from state-of-the-art laser systems of intensities of the order of 10(21) W/cm(2).

Fields of a focused linearly polarized Gaussian beam: truncated series versus the complex-source-point spherical-wave representation.

Fields of a linearly polarized fundamental Gaussian beam are derived exactly using the propagation characteristics of a complex-source-point spherical wave diverging from the origin. Intensity distributions are calculated and compared with their counterparts in a truncated series. It is found that utility of the exact fields is limited by a discontinuity inherent in the vector potential from which they have been obtained.

Direct high-power laser acceleration of ions for medical applications.

Theoretical investigations show that linearly and radially polarized multiterawatt and petawatt laser beams, focused to subwavelength waist radii, can directly accelerate protons and carbon nuclei, over micron-size distances, to the energies required for hadron cancer therapy. Ions accelerated by radially polarized lasers have generally a more favorable energy spread than those accelerated by linearly polarized lasers of the same intensity.

Acceleration in vacuum of bare nuclei by tightly focused radially polarized laser light.

Fields of a radially polarized petawatt laser beam, represented by a truncated series in the diffraction angle epsilon to order epsilon15 and focused to subwavelength waist radius, are shown to accelerate protons and bare nuclei to several hundred MeV per nucleon over a distance equivalent to a few laser wavelengths.

Mono-energetic GeV electrons from ionization in a radially polarized laser beam.

Fields of a radially polarized laser beam developed recently [Y. I. Salamin, Opt. Lett.31, 2619 (2006)] are employed to show that electrons produced by atomic ionization near the focus may be accelerated to GeV energies. Conditions for producing a mono-energetic and well-collimated electron beam are discussed.

Fields of a radially polarized Gaussian laser beam beyond the paraxial approximation.

Analytic expressions for the fields of a tightly focused radially polarized Gaussian laser beam are derived, accurate to epsilon5, where epsilon is the associated diffraction angle. The fields satisfy Maxwell's equations, and the calculated beam power based on them is significantly different from that of the paraxial-approximation fields.

Relativistic electron dynamics in intense crossed laser beams: acceleration and Compton harmonics.

Electron motion and harmonic generation are investigated in the crossed-beam laser-accelerator scheme in a vacuum. Exact solutions of the equations of motion of the electron in plane-wave fields are given, subject to a restricted set of initial conditions. The trajectory solutions corresponding to axial injection are used to calculate precise emission spectra. Guided by hindsight from the analytic investigations, numerical calculations are then performed employing a Gaussian-beam representation of the fields in which terms of order epsilon(5), where epsilon is the diffraction angle, are retained. Present-day laser powers and initial conditions on the electron motion that simulate realistic laboratory conditions are used in the calculations. The analytic plane-wave work shows, and the numerical investigations confirm, that an optimal crossing angle exists, i.e., one that renders the electron energy gain a maximum for a particular set of parameters. Furthermore, the restriction to small crossing angles is not made anywhere. It is also shown that energy gains of a few GeV and energy gradients of several TeV/m may be obtained using petawatt power laser beams.

Electron acceleration by a tightly focused laser beam.

State-of-the-art petawatt laser beams may be focused down to few-micron spot sizes and can produce violent electron acceleration as a result of the extremely intense and asymmetric fields. Classical fifth-order calculations in the diffraction angle show that electrons, injected sideways into the tightly focused laser beam, get captured and gain energy in the GeV regime. We point out the most favorable points of injection away from the focus, along with an efficient means of extracting the energetic electron with a static magnetic field.