Laser acceleration of electrons: Zero to cc in less than ten microns

Abstract

It has recently been shown that by simply focusing a high-intensity laser into a gas jet, a well-defined and low-divergence beam of relativistic electrons is produced, which is accelerated by a laser wakefield. Above a certain power threshold, the laser is observed to be relativistically self-guided, creating its own light pipe. This effectively increases the laser propagation distance (beyond the fundamental diffraction limit), decreases the electron beam divergence, and increases the electron energy. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.