Ultrashort high energy electron bunches from tunable surface plasma waves driven with laser wavefront rotation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method using laser wavefront rotation and optimized grating design to generate ultra-short, high-energy electron bunches via surface plasma waves, advancing laser-driven electron acceleration techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining laser wavefront rotation with tailored grating targets to produce ultra-short, high-energy electron bunches, with detailed modeling and simulations.

Findings

Achieved electron bunches up to 70 MeV energy.

Generated electron bunches with durations of a few femtoseconds.

Produced high-charge electron bunches of tens of picoCoulombs.

Abstract

We propose to use ultra-high intensity laser pulses with wavefront rotation (WFR) to produce short, ultra-intense surface plasma waves (SPW) on grating targets for electron acceleration. Combining a smart grating design with optimal WFR conditions identified through simple analytical modeling and particle-in-cell simulation allows to decrease the SPW duration (down to few optical cycles) and increase its peak amplitude. In the relativistic regime, for $I\lambda_0^2=3.4 \times 10^{19}{\rm W/cm^2\mu m^2}$, such SPW are found to accelerate high-charge (few 10's of pC), high-energy (up to 70 MeV) and ultra-short (few fs) electron bunches.