A highly relativistic electron beam produced by a 50 TW laser-plasma accelerator has been characterized by photonuclear techniques. The beam has large divergence that increases with plasma density. The electron yield also increases with plasma density and reaches up to 4x10(11) electrons ( >10 MeV), with beam current approaching the Alfvén limit. Effective electron temperatures exceeding 8 MeV ...

In this Letter we discuss a novel method for generating ultrashort radiation pulses using a broadband two-stream instability in an intense relativistic electron beam. This method relies on an electron beam having two distinct two-energy bands. The use of this new high brightness electron beam scenario, in combination with ultrashort soft x-ray pulses from high harmonic generation in gas, allows...

The investigation of current transformers for measurements of beam current for relativistic electrons in air is presented in this report. The industrial CW electron accelerator “Rhodotron” ( E = 5 MeV, I = 1-16 mA) was used for experiments. The effect of scanning electron beam allows pulsed current transformers to be used for measurements of beam current. The comparison of beam current measurem...

Relativistic klystrons are being developed as an rf power source for high gradient accelerators applications which include large linear electronpositron colliders, compact accelerators, and FEL sources. In a relativistic klystron two-beam accelerator (RK-TBA), the drive beam passes through a large number of rf output structures. High conversion efficiency of electron beam energy to rf energy ca...

The Budker-Chirikov instability (BCI) in a two-beam electron-ion system is researched. The BCI is due to the interaction of the slow cyclotron wave of the electron beam with the fast betatron wave of the ion beam. The electron-ion system consists of a high current relativistic electron beam propagating co-axially with a nonrelativistic ion beam in a drift tube. The external radii of the electro...

Dirac equation for the finite dipole potential is solved by the method of the join of the asymptotics. The formulas for the near continuum state energy term of a relativistic electron-dipole system are obtained analytically. Two cases are considered: Z < 137 and Z > 137 Dirac equation for Z > 137 is solved by usual method of cut-off potential at small distances.

It has long been known that lasers can interact with relativistic electrons in magnetic undulators to imprint sinusoidal modulations that can be used to slice electrons into microbunches equally separated at the laser wavelength. Here we report on the first direct measurement of laser-induced microbunching of a relativistic electron beam with femtosecond resolution in the time domain. Using a m...