Electron acceleration in a gas-filled hot-channel diode under atmospheric pressure

A new method for electron acceleration in a gaseous medium is proposed and theoretically substantiated. The method is based on using a high-temperature gas domain (laser-induced jet, arc channel, etc.) as a source of runaway electrous with their subsequent acceleration in a dense low-temperature gas. It is shown feasible to obtain accelerated electron beams with currents as high as 1 kA and an average energy of approximately (2/3)eU (where U is the accelerating voltage), which is comparable to the parameters of the beams generated by accelerators on the basis of vacuum diodes.