Jitter-free 40-fs 375-keV electron pulses directly accelerated by an intense laser beam and their application to direct observation of laser pulse propagation in a vacuum

Abstract We report the generation of ultrashort bright electron pulses directly driven by irradiating a solid target with intense femtosecond laser pulses. The duration of electron pulses after compression by a phase rotator composed of permanent magnets was measured as 89 fs via the ponderomotive s...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Shunsuke Inoue, Shuji Sakabe, Yoshihide Nakamiya, Masaki Hashida
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2020
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/d025562a958c4f3b83dd2434a5040037
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract We report the generation of ultrashort bright electron pulses directly driven by irradiating a solid target with intense femtosecond laser pulses. The duration of electron pulses after compression by a phase rotator composed of permanent magnets was measured as 89 fs via the ponderomotive scattering of electron and laser pulses, which were almost at the compression limit due to the dispersion of the electron optics. The electron pulse compression system consisting of permanent magnets enabled extremely high timing stability between the laser pulse and electron pulse. The long-term RMS arrival time drift was below 14 fs in 4 h, which was limited by the resolution of the current setup. Because there was no time-varying field to generate jitter, the timing jitter was essentially reduced to zero. To demonstrate the capability of the ultrafast electron pulses, we used them to directly visualize laser pulse propagation in a vacuum and perform 2D mapping of the electric fields generated by low-density plasma in real time.