Scientific Reports (May 2018)

Attosecond electron bunches from a nanofiber driven by Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulses

  • Li-Xiang Hu,
  • Tong-Pu Yu,
  • Zheng-Ming Sheng,
  • Jorge Vieira,
  • De-Bin Zou,
  • Yan Yin,
  • Paul McKenna,
  • Fu-Qiu Shao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25421-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Abstract Generation of attosecond bunches of energetic electrons offers significant potential from ultrafast physics to novel radiation sources. However, it is still a great challenge to stably produce such electron beams with lasers, since the typical subfemtosecond electron bunches from laser-plasma interactions either carry low beam charge, or propagate for only several tens of femtoseconds. Here we propose an all-optical scheme for generating dense attosecond electron bunches via the interaction of an intense Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) laser pulse with a nanofiber. The dense bunch train results from the unique field structure of a circularly polarized LG laser pulse, enabling each bunch to be phase-locked and accelerated forward with low divergence, high beam charge and large beam-angular-momentum. This paves the way for wide applications in various fields, e.g., ultrabrilliant attosecond x/γ-ray emission.