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1. Accurate simulation of direct laser acceleration in a laser wakefield accelerator

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0152383  

   Miller, Kyle G.; Palastro, John P.; Shaw, Jessica L.; Li, Fei; Tsung, Frank S.; Decyk, Viktor K.; Joshi, C.; Mori, Warren B. (July 2023, Physics of Plasmas)

   In a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA), an intense laser pulse excites a plasma wave that traps and accelerates electrons to relativistic energies. When the pulse overlaps the accelerated electrons, it can enhance the energy gain through direct laser acceleration (DLA) by resonantly driving the betatron oscillations of the electrons in the plasma wave. The traditional particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithm, although often the tool of choice to study DLA, contains inherent errors due to numerical dispersion and the time staggering of the electric and magnetic fields. Furthermore, conventional PIC implementations cannot reliably disentangle the fields of the plasma wave and laser pulse, which obscures interpretation of the dominant acceleration mechanism. Here, a customized field solver that reduces errors from both numerical dispersion and time staggering is used in conjunction with a field decomposition into azimuthal modes to perform PIC simulations of DLA in an LWFA. Comparisons with traditional PIC methods, model equations, and experimental data show improved accuracy with the customized solver and convergence with an order-of-magnitude fewer cells. The azimuthal-mode decomposition reveals that the most energetic electrons receive comparable energy from DLA and LWFA. 

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2. Phonon Laser in the Quantum Regime

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.043605  

   Behrle, T; Nguyen, T L; Reiter, F; Baur, D; de_Neeve, B; Stadler, M; Marinelli, M; Lancellotti, F; Yelin, S F; Home, J P (July 2023, Physical Review Letters)
3. Coulomb Explosion in Nanosecond Laser Fields

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c00092  

   Zhang, Jie; Yao, Yuzhong; Kong, Wei (January 2020, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters)
4. Laser Amplification in Strongly Magnetized Plasma

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.025001  

   Edwards, Matthew R.; Shi, Yuan; Mikhailova, Julia M.; Fisch, Nathaniel J. (July 2019, Physical Review Letters)
5. Beam dynamics in dielectric laser acceleration

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/17/05/P05014  

   Niedermayer, U.; Leedle, K.; Musumeci, P.; Schmid, S.A. (May 2022, Journal of Instrumentation)

   Abstract We discuss recent developments and challenges of beam dynamics in Dielectric Laser Acceleration (DLA), for both high and low energy electron beams. Starting from ultra-low emittance nanotip sources the paper follows the beam path of a tentative DLA light source concept. Acceleration in conjuction with focusing is discussed in the framework of Alternating Phase Focusing (APF) and spatial harmonic ponderomotive focusing. The paper concludes with an outlook to the beam dynamics in laser driven nanophotonic undulators, based on tilted DLA grating structures. 

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