Strong Lasers, Fast Particles

During the interaction of matter with the extreme light intensities occurring in the focus of a high-intensity laser, new and surprising effects take place. Especially in plasma, very strong fields are generated, which are long-lived in comparison with the driving field oscillations. Hence they are well suited for the collective acceleration of particle bunches, which display some unique properties which seem to make them ideally suited for driving new and ultrashort X-ray sources. However, the tight specifications for the driving laser pulses motivate a continuous advance in laser technology.