![]() Table-top petawatt-class lasers provide a large electric field (>10 TV/m) capable of accelerating electrons to near-light speed over a very short distance 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Our result also sheds light on the fundamental relativistic transparency process, crucial for producing secondary particle and light sources. It is possible to further optimize the electron injection/acceleration by manipulating the laser polarization, incident angle, and temporal pulse shaping. When a high-contrast intense laser drives a thin solid foil, electrons from the dense opaque plasma are first accelerated to near-light speed by the standing laser wave in front of the solid foil and subsequently injected into the transmitted laser field as the opaque plasma becomes relativistically transparent. Here we demonstrate free-electron injection and subsequent vacuum laser acceleration of electrons up to 20 MeV using the relativistic transparency effect. Yet its realization has been difficult because injecting free electrons into the fast-oscillating laser field is not trivial. Among the various schemes of laser-based electron acceleration, vacuum laser acceleration has the merits of super-high acceleration gradient and great simplicity. Such compact accelerators have several potential applications including fast ignition, high energy physics, and radiography. Intense lasers can accelerate electrons to very high energy over a short distance.
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