Measurement of free-fall acceleration in a stationary gravitational field

A simple method is proposed for the measurement of the fundamental kinematic characteristics of a particle falling freely in a stationary gravitational field near an observer whose world line is the trajectory of a group of motions. An expression is obtained for the observable acceleration on the world line of the observer, and some particular cases are considered. In the concluding section the results of a previous paper by the author are reviewed.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 4, pp, 7–13, April, 1977.     

Unlimited relativistic shock surfing acceleration

Nonrelativistic shock surfing acceleration at quasiperpendicular shocks is usually considered to be a preacceleration mechanism for slow pickup ions to initiate diffusive shock acceleration. In shock surfing, the particle accelerates along the shock front under the action of the convective electric field of the plasma flow. However, the particle also gains kinetic energy normal to the shock and eventually escapes downstream. We consider the case when ions are accelerated to relativistic velocities. In this case, the ions are likely to be trapped for infinitely long times, because the energy of bounce oscillations tends to decrease during acceleration. This suggests the possibility of unlimited acceleration by shock surfing.     

Electron acceleration to GeV energy by a radially polarized laser

We present a relativistic single particle simulation of vacuum acceleration of an electron by a high-intensity radially polarized laser beam. The inherent complete symmetry of radially polarized laser beam leads to improvement in the trapping and acceleration of an electron so that an electron can be accelerated to the level of GeV. In addition, the external magnetic field further enhances the electron acceleration. Hence, an electron of ultrahigh energy was observed. The strong correlation between final electron energy and scattering angle is discussed.     

Channeling of relativistic laser pulses, surface waves, and electron acceleration

The interaction of a high-energy relativistic laser pulse with an underdense plasma is studied by means of 3-dimensional particle in cell simulations and theoretical analysis. For powers above the threshold for channeling, the laser pulse propagates as a single mode in an electron-free channel during a time of the order of 1?picosecond. The steep laser front gives rise to the excitation of a surface wave along the sharp boundaries of the ion channel. The surface wave first traps electrons at the channel wall and preaccelerates them to relativistic energies. These particles then have enough energy to be further accelerated in a second stage through an interplay between the acceleration due to the betatron resonance and the acceleration caused by the longitudinal part of the surface wave electric field. It is necessary to introduce this two-stage process to explain the large number of high-energy electrons observed in the simulations.     

锥形激光等离子体中Compton 散射对电子的加速

应用相对论性电子与光子非弹性碰撞模型和经典相对论电动力学理论,结合锥形飞秒强激光等离子体中的光场特性和静电场能,分析、计算了入射的高能电子束与等离子体中的光子发生多光子非线性Compton散射时对电子的加速效应,发现等离子体中的光场会引起电子加速能量的振荡;等离子体中的静电场降低电子的加速效应。用高能电子束与锥形飞秒强激光等离子体中的光子发生双光子非线性Compton散射,是加速电子最为理想的情况。     

Relativistic Point Dynamics and Einstein Formula as a Property of Localized Solutions of a Nonlinear Klein-Gordon Equation

Einstein’s relation E = Mc ² between the energy E and the mass M is the cornerstone of the relativity theory. This relation is often derived in a context of the relativistic theory for closed systems which do not accelerate. By contrast, the Newtonian approach to the mass is based on an accelerated motion. We study here a particular neoclassical field model of a particle governed by a nonlinear Klein-Gordon (KG) field equation. We prove that if a solution to the nonlinear KG equation and its energy density concentrate at a trajectory, then this trajectory and the energy must satisfy the relativistic version of Newton’s law with the mass satisfying Einstein’s relation. Therefore the internal energy of a localized wave affects its acceleration in an external field as the inertial mass does in Newtonian mechanics. We demonstrate that the “concentration” assumptions hold for a wide class of rectilinear accelerating motions.     

Low-diffraction direct particle acceleration by a radially polarized laser beam

Two constants of the motion, which simplify the relativistic particle dynamics in a laser beam of radial polarization, are identified. Many-particle simulations based on the reduced set of equations of motion in a beam of relativistic intensity, demonstrate acceleration in vacuum to GeV energies of electrons, alpha particles and oxygen bare nuclei. The axially-injected particles are shown to be accelerated with negligible diffraction.     

Relativistic Dynamics of Accelerating Particles Derived from Field Equations

In relativistic mechanics the energy-momentum of a free point mass moving without acceleration forms a four-vector. Einstein’s celebrated energy-mass relation E=mc ² is commonly derived from that fact. By contrast, in Newtonian mechanics the mass is introduced for an accelerated motion as a measure of inertia. In this paper we rigorously derive the relativistic point mechanics and Einstein’s energy-mass relation using our recently introduced neoclassical field theory where a charge is not a point but a distribution. We show that both the approaches to the definition of mass are complementary within the framework of our field theory. This theory also predicts a small difference between the electron rest mass relevant to the Penning trap experiments and its mass relevant to spectroscopic measurements.     

Visible-laser acceleration of relativistic electrons in a semi-infinite vacuum

We demonstrate a new particle acceleration mechanism using 800 nm laser radiation to accelerate relativistic electrons in a semi-infinite vacuum. The experimental demonstration is the first of its kind and is a proof of principle for the concept of laser-driven particle acceleration in a structure loaded vacuum. We observed up to 30 keV energy modulation over a distance of 1000 lambda, corresponding to a 40 MeV/m peak gradient. The energy modulation was observed to scale linearly with the laser electric field and showed the expected laser-polarization dependence. Furthermore, as expected, laser acceleration occurred only in the presence of a boundary that limited the laser-electron interaction to a finite distance.     

Radiative intermittent events during Fermi's stochastic acceleration

We investigate the dynamics of a realization of Fermi's relativistic acceleration mechanism that is a charged test particle oscillating between two reflecting plates that move stochastically. By allowing the charge to radiate energy during each collision, we find that the main features of the system are (1) due to the radiation drag the energy gained by the particle is bounded, and (2) the radiated energy represents a typical realization of an on-off intermittent process, due to numerous continuous encounters with a very small emission, interrupted by short and intense bursts of radiation. This intermittent radiative process exhibits non-Gaussian statistical features.     

Magnetic reconnection and acceleration of particles on the sun

The present-day state of the problem regarding the acceleration of high-energy particles in solar flares is reviewed briefly. It is shown that an analytical solution to the equation of charged-particle motion in a reconnecting current layer with a 3D magnetic field and the electric field caused by magnetic reconnection allows us to offer an explanation for the acceleration of electrons and protons to relativistic energies over very short time intervals. The theoretical results are compared to recent observations of accelerated particles in solar flares.     

Laser wake field acceleration: the highly non-linear broken-wave regime

We use three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to study laser wake field acceleration (LWFA) at highly relativistic laser intensities. We observe ultra-short electron bunches emerging from laser wake fields driven above the wave-breaking threshold by few-cycle laser pulses shorter than the plasma wavelength. We find a new regime in which the laser wake takes the shape of a solitary plasma cavity. It traps background electrons continuously and accelerates them. We show that 12-J, 33-fs laser pulses may produce bunches of 3×10¹⁰ electrons with energy sharply peaked around 300 MeV. These electrons emerge as low-emittance beams from plasma layers just 700-μm thick. We also address a regime intermediate between direct laser acceleration and LWFA, when the laser-pulse duration is comparable with the plasma period. Received: 12 December 2001 / Published online: 14 March 2002     

Scaling electron acceleration in the bubble regime for upcoming lasers

Electron acceleration in the laser-plasma bubble appeared to be the most successful regime of laser wake field acceleration in the last decade. The laser technology became mature enough to generate short and relativistically intense pulses required to reach the bubble regime naturally delivering quasi-monoenergetic bunches of relativistic electrons. The upcoming laser technology projects are promising short pulses with many times more energy than the existing ones. The natural question is how will the bubble regime scale with the available laser energy. We present here a parametric study of laser-plasma acceleration in the bubble regime using full three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and compare numerical results with the analytical scalings from the relativistic laser-plasma similarity theory.     

Path integral for the relativistic particle and harmonic oscillators

The action for a massive particle in special relativity can be expressed as the invariant proper length between the end points. In principle, one should be able to construct the quantum theory for such a system by the path integral approach using this action. On the other hand, it is well known that the dynamics of a free, relativistic, spinless massive particle is best described by a scalar field which is equivalent to an infinite number of harmonic oscillators. We clarify the connection between these two—apparently dissimilar—approaches by obtaining the Green function for the system of oscillators from that of the relativistic particle. This is achieved through defining the path integral for a relativistic particle rigorously by two separate approaches. This analysis also shows a connection between square root Lagrangians and the system of harmonic oscillators which is likely to be of value in more general context.     

Coherent acceleration by laser pulse echelons in periodic plasma structures

We consider a possibilty to use an echelon of mutually coherent laser pulses generated by the emerging CAN (Coherent Amplification Network) technology for direct particle acceleration in periodic plasma structures. We discuss resonant and free streaming configurations. The resonant plasma structures can trap energy of longer laser pulses but are limited to moderate laser intensities of about 10¹⁴?W/cm² and are very sensitive to the structure quality. The free streaming configurations can survive laser intensities above 10¹⁸?W/cm² for several tens of femtoseconds so that sustained accelerating rates well above TeV/m are feasible. In our full electromagnetic relativistic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations we show a test electron bunch gaining up to 200?GeV over a distance of 10.2?cm only.     

相对论力学中恒力作用下带电粒子的运动

将相对论力学规律的三维形式应用于带电粒子运动问题,导出恒力作用下粒子的加速度关系式及速度关系式,并据此分别得出光速c是带电粒子速度极限的结论,同时还将其与经典力学中恒力作用下的粒子运动进行了比较。     

Langmuir Wave Phase Velocity in Unneutralized Beams

We investigate the dispersion relation for long wavelength slow Langmuir waves in a relativistic particle beam propagating along a strong magnetic guide field in an evacuated metallic waveguide. For a large class of beam radial profiles, wave phase velocity drops to zero with infinite slope as beam current approaches the space-charge limit. This result is of importance to certain collective ion acceleration proposals.     

Particle acceleration mechanisms in the auroral acceleration region

Particle acceleration by double layers is compared with other possible mechanisms of particle acceleration in the auroral acceleration region. Emphasis is on a recent suggestion that electrostatic wave turbulence is the only tenable explanation for particle acceleration in the auroral acceleration region     

Laser acceleration of electrons in a thin metal film

A mechanism acceleration of electrons to relativistic velocities in a thin metal film irradiated with ultrashort (τ _L ≤1 ps) high-power (I>¹⁶ W/cm²) laser pulses is proposed. The acceleration is due to a resonance action of the nonuniform field on a portion of the electrons, viz., those which oscillate in the direction transverse to the film with a frequency close to the frequency of the field. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 66, No. 1, 8–12 (10 July 1997)     

Excitation of an upper hybrid wave by two intense laser beams and particle acceleration

This Letter presents an investigation of the excitation of an upper hybrid wave (UHW) by cross focusing of two intense laser beams in a collisionless hot magnetoplasma, when relativistic and ponderomotive nonlinearities are operative. The electric vectors of the two beams are polarized along uniform static magnetic field and the beams propagate perpendicular to the static magnetic field. Analytical expressions for the beam width of the laser beams, electric vector and power of the excited UHW and energy gain have been obtained. The UHW generation at the difference frequency and particle acceleration has also been studied. The nonlinear coupling between intense laser beams and UHW is so strong that UHW gets excited and a large fraction of the laser beam energy gets transferred to UHW and this UHW accelerates electrons. It has been shown that the presence of a magnetic field affects significantly the power of the UHW and energy gain by the electron in the presence of the UHW.