Control of relativistic ionization by polarization of short laser pulses

Institute of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw - Pasteura 5, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland

Received: 20 June 2017
Accepted: 17 August 2017

Abstract

The Born approximation is applied to study the high-energy ionization that is driven by short, relativistically intense laser pulses. Assuming the fixed radiation flow through a surface of the laser focus, we investigate the optimal conditions for generating most energetic photoelectrons. We demonstrate that, under such constraint, one can control the photoelectron spectra using the polarization of the driving field. More precisely, the most energetic electrons are produced for a nearly linear polarization of the laser field. At the same time, the resulting electrons are detected in a narrow angular window which is of great importance for their potential applications; one of them being the generation of attosecond electron pulses.