Spontaneous emergence of non-planar electron orbits during direct laser acceleration by a linearly polarized laser pulse

Arefiev, A. V. and Khudik, V. N. and Robinson, A. P. L. and Shvets, G. and Willingale, L. (2016) Spontaneous emergence of non-planar electron orbits during direct laser acceleration by a linearly polarized laser pulse. Physics of Plasmas, 23 (2): 023111. ISSN 1070-664X

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Abstract

An electron irradiated by a linearly polarized relativistic intensity laser pulse in a cylindrical plasma channel can gain significant energy from the pulse. The laser electric and magnetic fields drive electron oscillations in a plane making it natural to expect the electron trajectory to be flat. We show that strong modulations of the relativistic gamma-factor associated with the energy enhancement cause the free oscillations perpendicular to the plane of the driven motion to become unstable. As a consequence, out of plane displacements grow to become comparable to the amplitude of the driven oscillations and the electron trajectory becomes essentially three-dimensional, even if at an early stage of the acceleration it was flat. The development of the instability profoundly affects the x-ray emission, causing considerable divergence of the radiation perpendicular to the plane of the driven oscillations, while also reducing the overall emitted energy. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Physics of Plasmas
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3100/3104
Subjects:
?? generationchannelscondensed matter physics ??
ID Code:
81944
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
07 Oct 2016 09:30
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jul 2024 16:24