Laser wakefield electron acceleration using intense ultrashort laser pulses. IT-1

Recent advances in the development of compact ultra-intense lasers delivering peak powers of several tens of terawatt to peta watt range have brought the concept of using lasers to accelerate charged particles to relativistic energies closer to its practical realization. Ultrashort high intensity laser pulses can produce longitudinal electric fields of the order 10-100 GV/m in plasma, which are three orders of magnitude higher than the fields employed in conventional linacs. These high acceleration gradients hold the promise of setting up compact high energy particle accelerators. Recently, several experiments have shown that laser wakefield acceleration can produce high quality electron beams with quasi-monoenergetic energy distribution and low divergence at the 100 MeV- 1 GeV energy level