Advanced methods of electron acceleration to high energies

The report presents an overview of the rapidly developing research in many laboratories of the world, aimed at creating a new generation of accelerators of relativistic electrons. Electron acceleration to ultrahigh energies of teraelectronvolt range and the creation of compact sources of relativistic electrons and hard X-rays requires the development of new methods of acceleration of electrons with an acceleration rate is much greater than achievable with traditional radio-frequency accelerators.
Among these methods, the most actively developing approaches are based on the use of wake fields generated in plasma by intense beams of charged particles (electrons or ions) or by relativistic-intense femtosecond laser pulses. Progress in laser-plasma acceleration of electrons to energies of a few GeV opens up the possibility of an experimental study of a multi-step acceleration to high energies with the use of a new generation of multi-petawatt class power lasers. On the other hand, these advances make the relevance of the theoretical analysis of the optimal parameters of laser-plasma accelerator system.
The report also discusses recent results on different mechanisms of high-energy electrons generation required for many applications.