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

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 7282 - 9
• Main Authors: Hu, Li-Xiang, Yu, Tong-Pu, Sheng, Zheng-Ming, Vieira, Jorge, Zou, De-Bin, Yin, Yan, McKenna, Paul, Shao, Fu-Qiu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 08.05.2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/624/400/385; 639/766/1960/1135; 639/766/1960/1137; Electrons; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lasers; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-25421-9

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 subfemtosecond 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 dense 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.