APPLIED PHYSICS: Laser-Driven Particle Accelerators

Laser-driven plasma-wave electron accelerators

LBNL Report, LBNL-53510 Physics of Laser-Driven Plasma-Based Accelerators

The physics of plasma-based accelerators driven by short-pulse lasers is reviewed. This includes the laser wakefield accelerator, the plasma beat wave accelerator, the self-modulated laser wakefield accelerator, and plasma waves driven by multiple laser pulses. The properties of linear and nonlinear plasma waves are discussed, as well as electron acceleration in plasma waves. Methods for inject...

Applied physics. Laser beams take a curve.

Formation of optical bullets in laser-driven plasma bubble accelerators.

Electron density bubbles--wake structures generated in plasma of density n(e) approximately 10(19) cm(-3) by the light pressure of intense ultrashort laser pulses--are shown to reshape weak copropagating probe pulses into optical "bullets." The bullets are reconstructed using frequency-domain interferometric techniques in order to visualize bubble formation. Bullets are confined in three dimens...

Massive photons in particle and laser physics

This article applies the theory of massive electrodynamics to the Dirac equation with the aim to find the generalized Volkov solution with massive photon field. The resulting equation is the Riccati equation which cannot be solved in general. We use the approximative Volkov function for massive photons and consider an electron in the periodic field and in the laser pulse of the δ-function form....