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Updated: Mar 31, 2026

Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
Dense Helical Electron Bunch Generation in Near-Critical Density Plasmas with Ultrarelativistic Laser Intensities
Ronghao Hu1, Bin Liu1,2, Haiyang Lu1
1State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, and Key Laboratory of HEDP of the Ministry of Education, CAPT, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
Abstract:
The mechanism for emergence of helical electron bunch(HEB) from an ultrarelativistic circularly polarized laser pulse propagating in near-critical density(NCD) plasma is investigated. Self-consistent three-dimensional(3D) Particle-in-Cell(PIC) simulations are performed to model all aspects of the laser plasma interaction including laser pulse evolution, electron and ion motions. At a laser intensity of 10(22) W/cm(2), the accelerated electrons have a broadband spectrum ranging from 300 MeV to 1.3 GeV, with the charge of 22 nano-Coulombs(nC) within a solid-angle of 0.14 Sr. Based on the simulation results, a phase-space dynamics model is developed to explain the helical density structure and the broadband energy spectrum.
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