Abstract
Ultrahigh-intensity laser-plasma physics provides unique light and particle beams as well as novel physical phenomena. A recently available regime is based on the interaction between a relativistic intensity few-cycle laser pulse and a sub-wavelength-sized mass-limited plasma target. Here, we investigate the generation of electron bunches under these extreme conditions by means of particle-in-cell simulations. In a first step, up to all electrons are expelled from the nanodroplet and gain relativistic energy from time-dependent local field enhancement at the surface. After this ejection, the electrons are further accelerated as they copropagate with the laser pulse. As a result, a few, or under specific conditions isolated, pC-class relativistic attosecond electron bunches are generated with laser pulse parameters feasible at state-of-the-art laser facilities. This is particularly interesting for some applications, such as generation of attosecond x-ray pulses via Thomson backscattering.
Highlights
The interaction of intense laser pulses with matter is capable of accelerating electrons to ultrarelativistic energies via various techniques
During a linearly polarised laser pulse interaction with an overdense nano-droplet, one or two trains of attosecond electron bunches are emitted from its surface in the polarization plane every half [31] or full laser cycle [32], depending on whether the nano-droplet is initially placed at or out of the laser propagation axis, respectively
The interaction of a few-cycle relativistic-intensity laser pulse with a mass-limited nanotarget enables the generation of a single attosecond relativistic electron bunch with continuous spectrum
Summary
The interaction of intense laser pulses with matter is capable of accelerating electrons to ultrarelativistic energies via various techniques. Electron bunches carrying a charge up to μC level, but of the duration in the order of picoseconds or longer can be generated via the self-modulated laser wakefield acceleration regime employing high energy laser systems, as it was recently shown at OMEGA [24]. During a linearly polarised laser pulse interaction with an overdense nano-droplet, one or two trains of attosecond electron bunches are emitted from its surface in the polarization plane every half [31] or full laser cycle [32], depending on whether the nano-droplet is initially placed at or out of the laser propagation axis, respectively. In a first step of the interaction with linear polarization, electron bunches are emitted with relativistic energy by the enhanced laser field from the surface of the nano-target. We describe the Thomson backscattering resulting in attosecond x-ray radiation as a possible application
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