Challenge to a tabletop high-energy laser wake-field accelerator

Recently there has been a great interest in laser-plasma accelerators as possible next generation particle accelerators because of their potential for ultrahigh accelerating gradients and a compact size compared with conventional accelerators. Particle acceleration occurs through interaction with large-amplitude plasma waves driven by an intense short laser pulse, known as a laser wake-field acceleration mechanism. Our recent experiments have demonstrated ultrahigh-gradient electron acceleration in the accelerating gradient of the order of 30 GeV/m excited by a multiterawatt laser pulse to obtain 18 MeV electrons. The current research is in progress to achieve a high-energy particle acceleration to the energies more than a GeV in a tabletop scale by the use of a 100 fs, 2 TW tabletop-terawatt laser system. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.