Recent paper in PoP selected as an Editor's Pick

PoP Palastro Malaca Vieira

A recent paper in Physics of Plasmas by EPP members Bernardo M and Jorge V and collaborators at Rochester University, USA, entitled “Laser-plasma acceleration beyond wave breaking” has been selected by the editors of Physics of Plasmas as a featured article. This paper discusses how superluminal plasma wakefields prevent wave-breaking of strongly nonlinear plasma waves in the blowout regime and thus self-injection of electrons into the plasma wake. This leads to enhanced and cleaner accelerating fields. Our finding could be an important step to further reduce the size and improve the quality of future plasma based accelerators.