Abstract
In this chapter we discuss the generation of high-energy electrons in laser-plasma interactions, in two very different regimes. First, we consider electron acceleration in wake waves generated in underdense plasmas, which is the concept behind the development of laser-plasma electron accelerators for high energy physics. Second, we consider the case of an overdense plasma, where electrons are accelerated at the interface where the laser impinges. Such problem is strongly connected to the general issue of collisionless absorption in an overdense plasma, possibly the most complex and less understood topic of laser-plasma interactions.
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- 2.
In experiments where the \(\tau _l>T_p\), the driving pulse and the plasma wave overlap and nonlinear beats generate EM sidebands at \(\omega \,\pm \, n\omega _p~(n=1,2,\ldots )\), a process known as Raman Scattering. In a strongly nonlinear regime, the density perturbation of the plasma wave self-modulates the envelope of the laser pulse resulting in a positive feedback for growth. See Esarey et al. (2009) for details on this regime.
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We also may notice that surface plasmons, both propagating and spatially localized, and their coupling with external waves in structured targets are building blocks of plasmonics and its several applications (see e.g. Barnes et al. 2003; Ozbay 2006 and references therein) and we might speculate that these concepts would find other applications with intense laser pulses, in what we might call high-field plasmonics.
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A deeper inspection of Eq. (4.39) shows that in the case of elliptical polarization, it is easily found that \(\delta n_e<0\) may occur only if the ellipticity parameter \(\epsilon <(\omega _p^2/2\omega ^2-1)^{-1/2}\simeq \sqrt{2}\omega /\omega _p\). This suggests that there is an “ellipticity threshold” for the onset of fast electron generation by the \(\mathbf{v }\times \mathbf{B }\) force.
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This emission is due to transition radiation, that occurs whenever a charged particles crosses a sharp interface between two media of different refractive index (Jackson 1998, Sect. 13.7).
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Macchi, A. (2013). Electron Acceleration. In: A Superintense Laser-Plasma Interaction Theory Primer. SpringerBriefs in Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6125-4_4
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