Spontaneous emergence of non-planar electron orbits during direct laser acceleration by a linearly polarized laser pulse
Abstract
An electron irradiated by a linearly polarized relativistic intensity laser pulse in a cylindrical plasma channel can gain significant energy from the pulse. The laser electric and magnetic fields drive electron oscillations in a plane making it natural to expect the electron trajectory to be flat. We show that strong modulations of the relativistic γ-factor associated with the energy enhancement cause the free oscillations perpendicular to the plane of the driven motion to become unstable. As a consequence, out of plane displacements grow to become comparable to the amplitude of the driven oscillations and the electron trajectory becomes essentially three-dimensional, even if at an early stage of the acceleration it was flat. The development of the instability profoundly affects the x-ray emission, causing considerable divergence of the radiation perpendicular to the plane of the driven oscillations, while also reducing the overall emitted energy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2016
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4942036
Entities
People
- A. P. L. Robinson
- Alexey V Arefiev
- G. Shvets
- Louise Willingale
- Vladimir Khudik
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- United States Department of Energy
- University of Michigan
- University of Texas at Austin