Electron acceleration by intense shock-like laser pulses in vacuum

With both analytical and numerical simulation methods, it is found that, by using an intense laser pulse with sharply rising or falling edges in vacuu m, an electron can be accelerated to very high energies, which approaches t he upper-limit of the energy predicted by the half-wavelength acceleration mechanism. Because the form factor of the laser pulse is like the shape of a shock wave, we call this kind of acceleration mechanism as shock-pulse-la ser acceleration. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.