2023/04/20 by R. Babjak, Babjak, R., L. Willingale +5 · 7 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser Design and Applications #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Laser-induced spectroscopy and plasma #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2304.10469
openalex publication_date 2023/04/20 · openalex created_date 2023/04/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons in underdense plasmas can provide 100s of nC of electrons accelerated to near-GeV energies using currently available lasers. Here we demonstrate the key role of electron transverse displacement in the acceleration and use it to analytically predict the expected maximum electron energies. The energy scaling is shown to be in agreement with full-scale quasi-3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a laser pulse propagating through a preformed guiding channel and can be directly used for optimizing DLA in near-future laser facilities. The strategy towards optimizing DLA through matched laser focusing is presented for a wide range of plasma densities paired with current and near-future laser technology. Electron energies in excess of 10 GeV are accessible for lasers at I∼ 1021~W/cm2.