Electron surface acceleration on a solid capillary target inner wall irradiated with ultraintense laser pulses

When ultraintense laser pulses irradiate solid targets with a large incident angle, quasistatic magnetic and electric fields are induced, which confine electrons along the target surface in an electrostatic and vector potential well. In this case, electrons are resonantly accelerated along the surface by laser electric field inside the potential well. By this surface acceleration process, high energy electrons are effectively generated whose temperature well exceeds the ponderomotive energy. The optimum conditions for realizing surface acceleration and its energy scalings are given. Capillary type targets are shown to have an advantage in utilizing the surface acceleration process by increasing the interaction length. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.