Attosecond light pulses generation along the target surface driven by obliquely-incident lasers

Abstract

A practical approach to achieve strong coherent synchrotron emissions (CSE) in relativistic laser-plasma interaction is proposed, where a plane target with its electron density satisfying the self-similar parameter S≃ne0/a0nc=1 is obliquely irradiated by a P-polarized laser pulse. In this case, electrons at the target surface are periodically dragged out into the vacuum by the laser field component perpendicular to the target surface, resulting in the formation of a series of dense electron bunches propagating along the target surface. Intense CSE is generated by these electron bunches under acceleration by the laser field component parallel to the target surface. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that an intense attosecond light pulse at intensity 9.1 × 1020 W/cm2 (electric field strength ∼41% as that of the drive laser) can be obtained through such CSE. In the high-order harmonics with 15ω0<ωn<500ω0 (ω0 is the laser frequency), the power spectrum of the emission scales as I(n)∼n−1.8 and the conversion efficiency from laser to emission reaches ∼10−2.