Electron acceleration in moving laser-induced gratings produced by chirped femtosecond pulses

Abstract

We propose nonrelativistic electron acceleration in a vacuum using interaction with two crossed chirped femtosecond laser pulses at different frequencies. Electron energy gain is optimized by the phase-matching of accelerated electron velocity to a maximum of ponderomotive force in the moving intensity grating by linear chirping of both pulses. Particle tracking simulations show acceleration gradients as high as 40 GeV m−1 (energy gain of hundreds of keV) using 25 fs pulses with peak power ≤500 GW. The dependence of electron energy gain and the deflection angle on experimental parameters (the amplitude of the electric field of laser pulses, and the initial phase shift between the electron and intensity grating) was studied in detail.