A collimated beam of MeV electrons accelerated by a terawatt laser

Summary form only given. The field at the focus of a short-pulse, high-power laser is so high that electrons oscillate at nearly the speed of light, giving rise to several interesting, and previously unstudied, effects. For instance, it produces extremely high laser pressure (called the ponderomotive force), which can drive a high-amplitude plasma "wake-field plasma wave", the basis for what is called the laser wake-field accelerator (LWPA). We have recently demonstrated that a laser wake field can produce a collimated beam of MeV electrons and that the laser may have been guided by relativistic self focusing and electron cavitation.