Abstract. The bubble regime of electron acceleration in ultra-relativistic laser plasma is considered. It has been shown that the bubble can produce ultra-short dense bunches of electrons with quasi-monoenergetic energy spectra. The first experiment in this regime done at LOA has confirmed the peaked electron spectrum (Faure J et al 2004 Nature at press). The generated electron bunch may have density an order of magnitude higher than that of the background plasma. The bubble is able to guide the laser pulse over many Rayleigh lengths, thus no preformed plasma channel is needed for high-energy particle acceleration in the bubble regime. In this work we discuss a simple analytical model for the bubble fields as well as the scaling laws.

Print publication: Issue 12B (December 2004)
Received 2 July 2004
Published 17 November 2004