Laser light can be caught by a grating engraved on a metal, via the excitation of an electron wave known as a surface plasmon. This latter is a bulding block of plasmonics, where the related effect of electromagnetic field confinement and enhancement is exploited to develop sub-micrometric electronic devices. Extension of plasmonics at very high fields would pave the way to novel applications, but such nonlinear regime is still largely unexplored and even the basic properties of high amplitude surface plasmons are almost unknown.
Because of their characteristics, surface plasmons have also the potential to accelerate electrons, much like surfers on sea waves. In this paper, Fedeli et al. demonstrate acceleration to high energies from surface plasmons driven by superintense femtosecond laser pulses. Besides the possible applications as an ultrashort electron source, the study gives direct evidence for relativistic surface plasmons and therefore is a step forward high field plasmonics.
The experiment has been performed at the SLIC facility in CEA Saclay (France) within a LASERLAB Europe-supported collaboration coordinated by INO scientist Andrea Macchi and CEA scientist Tiberio Ceccotti, with the fundamental contribution of young researchers associated to INO including Luca Fedeli, Giada Cantono and Andrea Sgattoni.

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