Ponderomotive acceleration of hot electrons in tenuous plasmas

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V. I. Geyko and G. M. Fraiman
Institute of Applied Physics, RAS, 46 Ulyanov Street, Nizhny Novgorod 603950, Russia

I. Y. Dodin and N. J. Fisch
Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

Received 9 February 2009; published 15 September 2009

Theoscillation-center Hamiltonian is derived for a relativistic electron injected withan arbitrary momentum in a linearly polarized laser pulse propagatingin tenuous plasma, assuming that the pulse length is smallerthan the plasma wavelength. For hot electrons generated by collisionswith ions under an intense laser drive, multiple regimes ofponderomotive acceleration are identified, and the laser dispersion is shownto affect the process at plasma densities down to 10¹⁷ cm⁻³.We consider the regime when the cold plasma is notaccelerated, requiring a/ gamma _g1, where a is the laser parameter, proportionalto the field amplitude, and gamma _g is the group-velocity Lorentzfactor. In this case, the Lorentz factor gamma of hotelectrons does not exceed Gamma [equivalent] a gamma _g after acceleration, assuming its initialvalue also satisfies gamma ₀ Gamma . Yet gamma ~ Gamma is attained within awide range of initial conditions; hence, a cutoff in thehot-electron distribution is predicted.

URL:	http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.036404
DOI:	10.1103/PhysRevE.80.036404
PACS:	52.38.Kd; 52.20.Fs; 45.20.Jj; 41.75.Ht 52.38.Kd Laser-plasma acceleration of electrons and ions 52.20.Fs Electron collisions in plasma 45.20.Jj Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics 41.75.Ht Relativistic electron and positron beams YEAR: 2009
KEYWORDS:	plasma density, plasma light propagation, plasma oscillations

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