Quasimonoenergetic electron beams with relativistic energies and ultrashort duration from laser-solid interactions at 0.5 kHz

Aghapi G. Mordovanakis (1, 2) , James Easter (1) , Natalia Naumova (3) , Konstantin Popov (4) , Paul-Edouard Masson-Laborde (5) , Bixue Hou (1) , Igor Sokolov (6) , Gérard Mourou (7) , Igor V. Glazyrin (8) , Wojciech Rozmus (4) , Valery Bychenkov (9) , John Nees (1) , Karl Krushelnick (1)

1 CUOS - Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences
2 Department of Physics [Toronto]
3 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
4 Department of Physics [Edmonton]
5 DAM - Direction des Applications Militaires
6 SPRL - Space Physics Research Laboratory [Ann Arbor]
7 ILE - Institut de la Lumiére Extrême
8 Russian Federal Nuclear Center-E.I.
9 LPI RAS - P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Moscow]

We investigate the production of electron beams from the interaction of relativistically-intense laser pulses with a solid-density SiO2 target in a regime where the laser pulse energy is -mJ and the repetition rate -kHz. The electron beam spatial distribution and spectrum were investigated as a function of the plasma scale length, which was varied by deliberately introducing a moderate-intensity prepulse. At the optimum scale length of λ/2, the electrons are emitted in a collimated beam having a quasimonoenergetic distribution that peaked at -0.8MeV. A highly reproducible structure in the spatial distribution exhibits an evacuation of electrons along the laser specular direction and suggests that the electron beam duration is comparable to that of the laser pulse. Particle-in-cell simulations which are in good agreement with the experimental results offer insights on the acceleration mechanism by the laser field. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Aghapi G. Mordovanakis, James Easter, Natalia Naumova, Konstantin Popov, Paul-Edouard Masson-Laborde, et al.. Quasimonoenergetic electron beams with relativistic energies and ultrashort duration from laser-solid interactions at 0.5 kHz. Physical Review Letters, 2009, 103 (23), pp.235001.1-235001.4. ⟨10.1103/physrevlett.103.235001⟩. ⟨hal-00838486⟩