Electron Beam Characteristics from Laser-Driven Wave Breaking

The generation of high-current (>kA), relativistic electron beams from the wave breaking of plasma waves generated by a highly nonlinear interaction between Raman scattering, self-heating, and self-focusing of high-power (>5 TW), short-pulse (<1 ps) lasers is examined in detail using a fully explicit particle-in-cell model. The resulting beams have a continuous energy spread with a maximum energy exceeding simple dephasing estimates. For a 5 J laser, a total of 2×10¹¹ electrons are accelerated, but 2×10⁸ electrons are at 50±1 MeV with a normalized emittance of 13π mm mrad.