700 nC electron bunches from intense laser-plasma interactions

The commissioning of multi-petawatt class laser facilities around the world is gathering pace. One of the primary motivations for these investments is the acceleration of high-quality, low-emittance electron bunches. In this work, the first conclusive computational evidence is provided that super-high charge electron beams (hundreds of nano-Coulombs) with emittance properties comparable to those required for forefront particle colliders are formed from the interaction of an intense laser pulse with over-dense plasma. On attosecond timescales, such bunches provide the dominant laser-plasma energy absorption mechanism. Bunch energies are predicted via the Zero Vector Potential model and compared to two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations over an unprecedentedly large parameter space: from non-relativistic laser intensities to the laser-QED regime and from the critical plasma density to well beyond solid density. These results have wide-ranging implications for future particle accelerator science and associated technologies.