162

Terahertz wave driven electron acceleration from gas jet

Dr. Szabolcs Turnár1,2, Mr. Balázs Sarkadi2, Dr. Spencer W. Jolly3, Prof. János Hebling2,4, Dr. Zoltán Tibai2
1HUN-REN-PTE High-Field Terahertz Research Group, Pécs, Hungary. 2Institute of Physics, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary. 3Service OPERA-Photonique, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. 4Szentágothai Research Centre, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

Abstract

In our work, counter-propagating THz pulses were used to accelerate electrons from a Krypton gas jet. Using numerical simulations, we investigated three different ionization arrangements: (i) the ionizing laser pulse propagates in the same direction as the accelerated electrons, (ii) the ionizing laser pulse propagates in the opposite direction to the accelerated electrons, (iii) two counterpropagating ionizing laser pulses generate the electrons. We showed that the ionization process has a significant effect on the acceleration efficiency and the energy spectra. We investigated the acceleration with fC-pC initial charge using the three different ionization techniques.