Umstadter D, Chen S, Maksimchuk A, Mourou G, Wagner R
Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Science. 1996 Jul 26;273(5274):472-5. doi: 10.1126/science.273.5274.472.
When a terawatt-peak-power laser beam is focused into a gas jet, an electron plasma wave, driven by forward Raman scattering, is observed to accelerate a naturally collimated beam of electrons to relativistic energies (up to 10(9) total electrons, with an energy distribution maximizing at 2 megaelectron volts, a transverse emittance as low as 1 millimeter-milliradian, and a field gradient of up to 2 gigaelectron volts per centimeter). Electron acceleration and the appearance of high-frequency modulations in the transmitted light spectrum were both found to have sharp thresholds in laser power and plasma density. A hole in the center of the electron beam may indicate that plasma electrons were expelled radially.
