Electron acceleration in vacuum by a linearly-polarized ultra-short tightly-focused THz pulse

The analytic expressions for the electric and magnetic fields of an ultra-short, tightly-focused, linearly polarized laser pulse propagating in vacuum, derived elsewhere (Salamin, 2015) [13] to lowest-order of a truncated power-series expansion from vector and scalar potentials, are employed here for single electron acceleration calculations by THz radiation. It is shown that, while currently available THz peak powers cannot accelerate electrons appreciably, yet they result in substantial energy gradients. The field equations are used to show that an electron can be accelerated, in vacuum, from rest to 4.83 MeV by interaction with a single THz pulse of 1 TW power. Similarly, a 1 GW power pulse focused to sub-wavelength waist radius at focus is shown to accelerate the electron from rest to 5.76 keV. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.