Super-high energy particle acceleration by super-strong laser pulses in plasmas

Abstract

The recent tremendous progress of ultraintense lasers creates novel concepts of high energy particle generation and acceleration due to super-strong field interactions with matter. In a state of the art of ultra-intense lasers, the highest laser intensities reach a TeV range in terms of the ponderomotive energy exerted on matter. This implies that a forefront of high energy particle physics phenomena may be revealed with super-strong laser-matter interactions. As an accelerator-oriented application, the recent status of laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) experiments proceeded at JAERI-APR are presented to accomplish high energy gains of the order of GeV with high quality electron beam injection. A new concept of super high energy particle acceleration mechanism based on super-strong laser-plasma interactions is presented, named as “Dirac accelerator.” When this super high energy particle acceleration mechanism takes place in the dense matter, super intense interactions of high energy particles will be produced.