LASER PARTICLE-ACCELERATION - BEAT-WAVE AND WAKEFIELD EXPERIMENTS

In a plasma, some of the energy of a high-power laser beam can be tran sferred to a longitudinal plasma wave with a high phase velocity. This wave can in turn accelerate relativistic charged particles to very hi gh energies. Several mechanisms have been proposed to generate these i ntense electric fields and some of them have already been tested exper imentally. Using the beat wave method, electric fields of 1-10 GV m(-1 ) have been produced and electrons have been accelerated with an energ y gain from 1 MeV to more than 30 MeV. Some preliminary experiments ha ve shown that electrons can be accelerated in plasma waves generated b y the wakefield method. In the case of self-modulated wakefield, elect ric fields larger than 100 GV m(-1) trap electrons and eject them from the plasma with an energy up to 100 MeV. The perspectives in the near future are the production of intense and short electron beams of a fe w MeV and the acceleration of electrons up to 1 GeV. To reach an energ y of 1 TeV and get closer to the parameters required by the high-energ y physicists, one will have to test some new methods to be able to gui de the laser beam over large distances.