A Cyclotron Resonance Laser Accelerator

Abstract

A laser acceleration mechanism which utilizes a strong static, almost uniform, magnetic field together with an intense laser pulse is analyzed. The interaction and acceleration mechanism relies on a self resonance effect. Since the laser field is assumed to be diffraction limited, the magnetic field must be spatially varied to maintain resonance. The effective accelerating gradient is shown to scale like l/√E_b, where E_b is the electron energy. For a numerical illustration we consider a 1 × 10¹³ W/cm2</sup., CO₂ laser and show that electrons can be accelerated to more than 500 MeV in a distance of 15 m (approximately two Rayleigh lengths).