超短强激光脉冲驱动等离子体波加速电子方案

随着超短脉冲激光技术的发展, 人们可以在台面尺度获得光强超过10¹⁸W/cm²、脉宽小于100fs的超短脉冲激光.超短脉冲激光很容易把静止的电子加速到兆电子伏的能量. 而更重要的是超短激光脉冲可以通过其有质动力激发大振幅的等离子体波(称为激光尾波场), 后者可以在毫米空间尺度把电子加速到上百兆电子伏的能量.文章将介绍激光尾波场加速电子的物理机制和方案、这个领域的最新进展、以及目前存在的问题.

Schemes for Electron Acceleration by Laser-Driven Plasma Waves

With the advent of the chirped-pulse-amplification technology, one is able to obtain the ultrashort laser pulses with a focused intensity over 1018W/cm2 and with a duration less than 100fs. Such laser pulses can accelerate electrons to relativistic energy directly. More importantly, they can drive large-amplitude plasma waves, so called the laser wakefields, which can accelerate electrons to the energy of hundreds of MeV in mm-length. In this paper, we introduce briefly various schemes of the laser wakefield accelerators, the recent progress, and the remaining challenges.