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

Hu, Li-Xiang and Yu, Tong-Pu and Sheng, Zheng-Ming and Vieira, Jorge and Zou, De-Bin and Yin, Yan and McKenna, Paul and Shao, Fu-Qiu (2018) Attosecond electron bunches from a nanofiber driven by Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulses. Scientific Reports, 8. 7282. ISSN 2045-2322 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25421-9)

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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 sub-femtosecond 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 stable 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.

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