Electrons in the field of interfering laser pulses with tilted fronts: formation of compressed bunches and their application for the generation of coherent γ - rays

Simulations show that optical traps for charged particles can be formed in the fields of intense ultrashort laser pulses with tilted amplitude fronts. The traps travel in space with the velocities close to the speed of light and can be used for the creation of electron bunches which, at the laser intensities which are currently attainable, are compressed to proportions far below the laser wavelength and have energies reaching hundreds of GeV per particle. If an additional ultrashort laser pulse is propagated in the direction opposite to that of the bunch motion and interacts with the electrons, inverse Compton scattering occurs, with most of the electron energy being transferred to the resulting gamma-quanta. (copyright 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co. KGaA, Weinheim) (orig.)