Directed Acceleration of Electrons from a Solid Surface by Sub-10-fs Laser Pulses

Brandl, F.; Hidding, B.; Osterholz, J.; Hemmers, D.; Karmakar, Anupam; Pukhov, A.; Pretzler, G.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.102.195001

Cited by 22 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A broad range of topical experiments are now performed worldwide on the interaction of ultraintense laser pulses (Iλ 2 > 10 18 W µm 2 /cm 2 ) with dense plasmas, driven by applications such as laser-driven ion [3,4,23,24] and electron acceleration [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], or the generation of intense harmonics and/or attosecond light pulses [22,33]. Clearly identifying the laser-plasma coupling mechanisms at play in this interaction regime, and determining the range of physical parameters where they are relevant, is essential for the proper understanding of such experiments.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Coupling Mechanisms between Ultraintense Laser Light and Dense Plasmas

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The interaction of intense laser beams with plasmas created on solid targets involves a rich nonlinear physics. Because such dense plasmas are reflective for laser light, the coupling with the incident beam occurs within a thin layer at the interface between plasma and vacuum. One of the main paradigms used to understand this coupling, known as Brunel mechanism, is expected to be valid only for very steep plasma surfaces. Despite innumerable studies, its validity range remains uncertain, and the physics involved for smoother plasma-vacuum interfaces is unclear, especially for ultrahigh laser intensities. We report the first comprehensive experimental and numerical study of the laser-plasma coupling mechanisms as a function of the plasma interface steepness, in the relativistic interaction regime. Our results reveal a clear transition from the temporally-periodic Brunel mechanism to a chaotic dynamic associated to stochastic heating. By revealing the key signatures of these two distinct regimes on experimental observables, we provide an important landmark for the interpretation of future experiments.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Coupling Mechanisms between Ultraintense Laser Light and Dense Plasmas

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The laser plasma-based acceleration schemes discussed so far in the pertinent literature may be divided into two groups according to whether the plasma is underdense, i.e., the plasma frequency ω p is smaller than the laser frequency ω, or vice versa. Wake-field accelerators and the so-called "bubble-regime" (see, e.g., [4,5,6]) fall into the former category while the interaction of intense laser pulses with solid surfaces or thin foils (see e.g., [7,8,9,10,11]) belongs to the latter, overdense regime.Of particular interest are finite-size targets where fast particles cannot escape into the field-free bulk material but yet the density of the accelerated particles may be sizable. In recent years the nonrelativistic interaction of intense laser light with small, subwavelength-size clusters has been thoroughly investigated [12].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Relativistic Attosecond Electron Bunches from Laser-Illuminated Droplets

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The generation of relativistic attosecond electron bunches is observed in three-dimensional, relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of the interaction of intense laser light with droplets. The electron bunches are emitted under certain angles which depend on the ratios of droplet radius to wavelength and plasma frequency to laser frequency. The mechanism behind the multi-MeV attosecond electron bunch generation is investigated using Mie theory. It is shown that the angular distribution and the high electron energies are due to a parameter-sensitive, time-dependent local field enhancement at the droplet surface.

show abstract

“…While a substantial literature of simulation/modeling papers exists that seeks to understand forward-going electron acceleration from laser interaction with solid targets [e.g., Refs. 11 -14], and a number of other papers investigate electron acceleration from obliquely incident laser light interacting with solids, [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] significantly less attention has been devoted to specularly directed electron acceleration mechanisms near normal incidence. Our goal is to understand the mechanisms involved with specularly accelerated electrons in a qualitative way and to help fill this gap in the literature.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Backward-propagating MeV electrons in ultra-intense laser interactions: Standing wave acceleration and coupling to the reflected laser pulse

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Laser-accelerated electron beams have been created at a kHz repetition rate from the reflection of intense (∼ 10 18 W/cm 2 ), ∼40 fs laser pulses focused on a continuous water-jet in an experiment at the Air Force Research Laboratory. This paper investigates Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations of the laser-target interaction to identify the physical mechanisms of electron acceleration in this experiment. We find that the standing-wave pattern created by the overlap of the incident and reflected laser is particularly important because this standing wave can "inject" electrons into the reflected laser pulse where the electrons are further accelerated. We identify two regimes of standing wave acceleration: a highly relativistic case (a0 ≥ 1), and a moderately relativistic case (a0 ∼ 0.5) which operates over a larger fraction of the laser period. In previous studies, other groups have investigated the highly relativistic case for its usefulness in launching electrons in the forward direction. We extend this by investigating electron acceleration in the specular (back reflection) direction and over a wide range of intensities (10 17 − 10 19 W cm −2 ).

show abstract

Directed Acceleration of Electrons from a Solid Surface by Sub-10-fs Laser Pulses

Cited by 22 publications

References 19 publications

Identification of Coupling Mechanisms between Ultraintense Laser Light and Dense Plasmas

Identification of Coupling Mechanisms between Ultraintense Laser Light and Dense Plasmas

Relativistic Attosecond Electron Bunches from Laser-Illuminated Droplets

Backward-propagating MeV electrons in ultra-intense laser interactions: Standing wave acceleration and coupling to the reflected laser pulse

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About