Generation of 100-MeV Attosecond Electron Bunches with Terawatt Few-Cycle Laser Pulses
Xing-Long Zhu, Weiyuan Liu, Min Chen, Su-Ming Weng, Feng He, R. Aßmann, Z. M. Sheng, Jie Zhang
Abstract
Laser-wakefield acceleration has been demonstrated to be a promising technique for compact electron accelerators. However, it is still challenging to achieve high-quality 100-MeV electron bunches of subfemtosecond duration with current techniques. Here, we present and numerically demonstrate an efficient scheme to produce such high-energy tunable ultrashort electron bunches, which is achieved by the use of a nonlinear wakefield driven by a terawatt few-cycle laser pulse in a tailored plasma channel. With the driving laser pulse energy of 25 mJ only, the resulting electron bunch can reach 101 MeV with 7.8-pC charge, approximately 4 mrad divergence, approximately 3% energy spread, energy efficiency above 3%, and a duration of hundreds of attoseconds. As such laser pulses may be obtained with a kilohertz repetition rate and high stability, our scheme could be interesting for ultrafast science and accelerator community.