A new concept of generating tight bunches of electrons accelerated to high energies is proposed. The electrons are born via ionization of a low-density neutral gas by laser radiation, and the concept is based on the electrons acceleration in traps arising within the pattern of interference of several relativistically intense laser pulses with amplitude fronts tilted relative to their phase fronts. The traps move with the speed of light and (1) collect electrons; (2) compress them to extremely high density in all dimensions, forming electron bunches; and (3) accelerate the resulting bunches to energies of at least several GeV per electron. The simulations of bunch formation employ the Newton equation with the corresponding Lorentz force.
The dynamics of an electron in a standing wave generated by two relativistically intense linearly polarized laser pulses with tilted amplitude fronts is studied. The analysis is based on solving numerically the relativistic Newton’s equation with the corresponding Lorentz force. A new scheme of laser acceleration of electrons by the direct action of the standing wave is proposed. It is shown that short bunches of electrons with energies reaching several GeV can be created for relativistic laser intensities.
Simulations show that optical traps for charged particles can be formed in the fields of intense ultrashort laser pulses with tilted amplitude fronts. The traps travel in space with the velocities close to the speed of light and can be used for the creation of electron bunches which, at the laser intensities which are currently attainable, are compressed to proportions far below the laser wavelength and have energies reaching hundreds of GeV per particle. If an additional ultrashort laser pulse is propagated in the direction opposite to that of the bunch motion and interacts with the electrons, inverse Compton scattering occurs, with most of the electron energy being transferred to the resulting gamma-quanta.
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