THEORY OF FREE-WAVE ACCELERATION

Laser acceleration of electrons is considered. A general formulation of the problem is developed that would allow the recently proposed accelerator based on nonlinear amplification of inverse bremsstrahlung electron acceleration (NAIBEA) to function with any state of polarization and shape of the laser pulse, and any kind of applied field. Analytical estimates as well as numerical analysis for the case of an applied magnetic field are made. It is found that electrons, injected with few tens of mega-electron-volts, can be accelerated to giga-electron-volt energies using a NAIBEA accelerator of a length of few meters.