Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Automated Delivery of Microfabricated Targets for Intense Laser Irradiation Experiments
Published on: January 28, 2021
Uniform laser-driven relativistic electron layer for coherent Thomson scattering
H-C Wu1, J Meyer-ter-Vehn, J Fernández
1Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA. hcwu@lanl.gov
Abstract:
A novel scheme is proposed to generate uniform relativistic electron layers for coherent Thomson backscattering. A few-cycle laser pulse is used to produce the electron layer from an ultrathin solid foil. The key element of the new scheme is an additional foil that reflects the drive-laser pulse, but lets the electrons pass almost unperturbed. Making use of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and well-known basic theory, it is shown that the electrons, after interacting with both the drive and reflected laser pulses, form a very uniform flyer freely cruising with a high relativistic γ factor exactly in the drive-laser direction (no transverse momentum). It backscatters the probe light with a full Doppler shift factor of 4γ(2). The reflectivity and its decay due to layer expansion are discussed.
Related Concept Videos
Thomson's e/m Experiment
A particle with charge q, speed v, and mass m enters an area from the top, where the magnetic and electric fields are perpendicular both to the particle's motion and to one another. The magnetic...
Electron Microscope Tomography and Single-particle Reconstruction
Electron Tomography
Electron tomography can be performed either in TEM or STEM (scanning transmission...
Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy: Radiation and Light Sources
Two common narrow-range 'line' sources used in AAS are hollow-cathode lamps (HCLs) and...
Electromagnetic Waves in Matter
Consider the electromagnetic wave passing through a dielectric medium. In such a case, Maxwell's equations get modified. In Ampere's law, ε0 , the dielectric permittivity of free space is replaced with ε, the permittivity of dielectric. Also, the vacuum permeability μ0 is replaced by the permeability of the medium, μ.
Furthermore, the...
Atomic Emission Spectroscopy: Instrumentation
The de Broglie Wavelength

