Two-color-laser-driven direct electron acceleration in infinite vacuum

Wepropose a direct electron acceleration scheme that uses a two-color pulsed radially polarized laser beam. The two-color scheme achieves electron acceleration exceeding 90% of the theoretical energy gain limit, over twice of what is possible with a one-color pulsed beam of equal total energy and pulse duration. The scheme succeeds by exploiting the Gouy phase shift to cause an acceleration-favoring interference of fields only as the electron enters its effectively final accelerating cycle. Optimization conditions and power scaling characteristics are discussed. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America