Ultrafast processes in radiation chemistry

Laser acceleration and its future

Laser acceleration is based on the concept to marshal collective fields that may be induced by laser. In order to exceed the material breakdown field by a large factor, we employ the broken-down matter of plasma. While the generated wakefields resemble with the fields in conventional accelerators in their structure (at least qualitatively), it is their extreme accelerating fields that distinguish the laser wakefield from others, amounting to tiny emittance and compact accelerator. The current research largely falls on how to master the control of acceleration process in spatial and temporal scales several orders of magnitude smaller than the conventional method. The efforts over the last several years have come to a fruition of generating good beam properties with GeV energies on a table top, leading to many applications, such as ultrafast radiolysis, intraoperative radiation therapy, injection to X-ray free electron laser, and a candidate for future high energy accelerators.

Characteristics of relativistic electron mirrors generated by an ultrashort nonadiabatic laser pulse from a nanofilm

For controllable generation of an isolated attosecond relativistic electron bunch [relativistic electron mirror (REM)] with nearly solid-state density, we proposed [V. V. Kulagin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 124801 (2007)] to use a solid nanofilm illuminated normally by an ultraintense femtosecond laser pulse having a sharp rising edge (nonadiabatic laser pulse). In this paper, the REM characteristics are investigated in a regular way for a wide range of parameters. With the help of two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, it is shown that, in spite of Coulomb forces, all of the electrons in the laser spot can be synchronously accelerated to ultrarelativistic velocities by the first half-cycle of the field, which has large enough amplitude. For the process of the REM generation, we also verify a self-consistent one-dimensional theory, which we developed earlier (cited above) and which takes into account Coulomb forces, radiation of the electrons, and laser amplitude depletion. This theory shows a good agreement with the results of the 2D PIC simulations. Finally, the scaling of the REM dynamical parameters with the field amplitude and the nanofilm thickness is analyzed.

Damage of supercoiled DNA by an ultrafast laser-driven electron x-ray source

Using magnetic fields to differentiate the effects of electrons and x-rays, it was discovered that single strand breaks in supercoiled DNA were mainly caused by the energetic ultrafast electrons rather than the ultrafast x-ray photons emitted from the same table-top ultrafast x-ray source. At constant pulse energy of the driving laser pulses, shorter laser pulses produced more strand breaks than longer ones. This was attributed to the increased flux of electrons produced with the shorter laser pulses. Other factors contributing to the DNA damage were investigated and discussed.