Electromagnetic field growth triggering super-ponderomotive electron acceleration during multi-picosecond laser-plasma interaction

High-energy Laser Ponderomotive Acceleration

A new concept of TeV-range laser ponderomotive acceleration in a plasma is proposed. Particles are accelerated in the point-like scattering by the leading front of the laser pulse, propagating at the group velocity less than the vacuum speed of light. In this scheme, the gain in particle energy is determined by the group velocity and does not depend on laser intensity, which determines the quan...

Developments of electron and proton acceleration using Laser-plasma Interaction

With the development in ultra-short, ultra-intense laser technology, the potential of inventing novel table-size charged particle accelerators using laser-plasma interaction has attracted a lot of attentions due to its advantages comparing to classical accelerators. The accelerators have broad application aspects, such as medical imaging, cancer therapy, fast ignition in inertial fusion, and pr...

Boosting laser-ion acceleration with multi-picosecond pulses

Using one of the world most powerful laser facility, we demonstrate for the first time that high-contrast multi-picosecond pulses are advantageous for proton acceleration. By extending the pulse duration from 1.5 to 6 ps with fixed laser intensity of 1018 W cm-2, the maximum proton energy is improved more than twice (from 13 to 33 MeV). At the same time, laser-energy conversion efficiency into ...

Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction

Ion acceleration driven by superintense laser pulses is attracting an impressive and steadily increasing effort. Motivations can be found in the applicative potential and in the perspective to investigate novel regimesasavailable laser intensitieswill be increasing.Experimentshavedemonstrated, over awide range of laser and target parameters, the generation of multi-MeV proton and ion beams with...

Laser-electron Compton Interaction in Plasma Channels