The sources of super-high energetic electron at relativistic circularly-polarized laser-solid interactions in the presence of large scale pre-plasmas

The two stage electron acceleration model [Wu et al., Nucl. Fusion 57, 016007 (2017)] is extended to investigate the sources of super-hot electrons at intense circularly polarized (CP) laser solid interactions. It is found that in the presence of large scale pre-formed plasmas, super-high energetic electrons can be generated. For laser of intensity 1020 W/cm2 and pre-plasma of scale-length 10 μm, the cut-off energy of electrons by CP laser can be as high as 120 MeV compared with 100 MeV by linearly polarized laser. This unexpected acceleration can be also explained by the two-stage acceleration model. The envelop modulation of reflected CP laser is figured out, and a modified scaling law of the maximal-possible energy gain when including the modulation effect is obtained.