Electron injection by evolution of self-modulated laser waketields

Abstract

Self-injection mechanisms in the self-modulated laser wakefield acceleration (SM-LWFA) are investigated. Two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations show that a significant amount of plasma electrons can be self-injected into the acceleration phase of a laser wakefield by a dynamic increase in the wake wavelength in the longitudinal direction. In this process, it is found that the wake wavelength increases due to the relativistic effect and this leads to a large amount of electron injection into the wakefields. In this paper, the injection phenomena are studied with 2D simulations and a brief explanation of the new self-injection mechanism is presented.