Jitter-free 40-fs 375-keV electron pulses directly accelerated by an intense laser beam and their application to direct observation of laser pulse propagation in a vacuum

Abstract

We report the generation of ultrashort bright electron pulses directly driven by irradiating a solid target with intense femtosecond laser pulses. The duration of electron pulses after compression by a phase rotator composed of permanent magnets was measured as 89 fs via the ponderomotive scattering of electron and laser pulses, which were almost at the compression limit due to the dispersion of the electron optics. The electron pulse compression system consisting of permanent magnets enabled extremely high timing stability between the laser pulse and electron pulse. The long-term RMS arrival time drift was below 14 fs in 4 h, which was limited by the resolution of the current setup. Because there was no time-varying field to generate jitter, the timing jitter was essentially reduced to zero. To demonstrate the capability of the ultrafast electron pulses, we used them to directly visualize laser pulse propagation in a vacuum and perform 2D mapping of the electric fields generated by low-density plasma in real time.

Generation of Intense Short Electron Pulses Using High‐Intensity Lasers

“…At present, these particle beams are predominantly generated by conventional accelerators, and the full potential of particle beam generation using lasers has not yet been realized in terms of beam quality and controllability. However, as described in this paper, further advances are expected in the future, such as the generation of ultrashort electron pulses [23]. Finally, an important feature of laser-generated quantum beams is that all quantum beams can be generated using a single laser, such that each quantum beam can be in perfect synchronization.…”

“…In this study, it has been confirmed that the electron deflection method using lasergenerated/accelerated electron pulses is useful for measuring electromagnetic fields that change at high speed. Recently, we have also succeeded in capturing a laser pulse traveling in a vacuum using this electron deflection method [23].…”

Synthesis of Hexagonal Structured GaS Nanosheets for Robust Femtosecond Pulse Generation

“…Ultrafast lasers that enable the generation of ultrashort energetic pulses have become indispensable tools for a variety of applications, such as industrial fabrication [1,2], biomedical diagnosis [3,4], controllable processing of materials [5,6], pulse measurement [7,8], gasphase thermometry, and species concentration measurements [9]. One common method for producing ultrashort pulses in ultrafast lasers is the passive method that introduces a modulation of the intracavity field by placing a saturable absorber (SA) element in the cavity [10][11][12][13].…”