TeV/m catapult acceleration of electrons in graphene layers

Recent nanotechnology advances enable fabrication of layered structures with controllable inter-layer gap, giving the ultra-violet (UV) lasers access to solid-state plasmas which can be used as medium for electron acceleration. By using a linearly polarized 3 fs-long laser pulse of 100 nm wavelength and 10 ^21 W/cm ^2 peak intensity, we show numerically that electron bunches can be accelerated along a stack of ionized graphene layers. Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations reveal a new self-injection mechanism based on edge plasma oscillations, whose amplitude depends on the distance between the graphene layers. Nanometre-size electron ribbons are electrostatically catapulted into buckets of longitudinal electric fields in less than 1 fs, as opposed to the slow electrostatic pull, common to laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) schemes in gas-plasma. Acceleration then proceeds in the blowout regime at a gradient of 4.79 TeV/m yielding a 0.4 fs-long bunch with a total charge in excess of 2.5 pC and an average energy of 6.94 MeV, after travelling through a graphene target as short as 1.5 m. These parameters are unprecedented within the LWFA research area and, if confirmed experimentally, may have an impact on fundamental femtosecond research.