2012/04/25 by Vincent Marceau, Alexandre April, Michel Piché · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.acc-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1364/ol.37.002442
published as Optics Letters, Vol. 37, Issue 13, pp. 2442-2444 (2012) · 3 pages. Accepted for publication in Optics Letters
arxiv created 2012/04/25 · arxiv updated 2012/11/20
Exact closed-form solutions to Maxwell's equations are used to investigate the acceleration of electrons in vacuum driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses. We show that the threshold power above which significant acceleration takes place is greatly reduced by using a tighter focus. Moreover, electrons accelerated by tightly focused single-cycle laser pulses may reach around 80% of the theoretical energy gain limit, about twice the value previously reported with few-cycle paraxial pulses. Our results demonstrate that the direct acceleration of electrons in vacuum is well within reach of the current laser technology.