NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF WAKE-FIELD ACCELERATION USING AN EULERIAN VLASOV CODE

Large amplitude wake fields can be produced by propagating ultrahigh power, short laser beams in plasmas. When the laser power is high enough, the electron oscillation (quiver) velocity becomes relativistic, and large amplitude wake fields are generated. In the laser wake-field accelerator concept, a correctly placed trailing electron bunch can be accelerated by the longitudinal electric field of the wake plasma waves [1]. We study this problem by using an eulerian Vlasov code for the solution of the one-dimensional relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell equations [2]. The code applies a numerical scheme based on a two-dimensional advection technique, of second order accuracy in time-step, where the value of the distribution function is advanced in time by interpolating in two dimensions along the characteristics using a tensor product of cubic B-splines [3,4]. We assume the frequency of the laser pulse 1/