Relativistic self-injection effects on ultra-intense laser wake field acceleration

Summary form only given, as follows. In the present work, we present a new mechanism of electron injection originating from the relativistic character of the laser-plasma interaction. The self-injection of plasma electrons which have been accelerated to relativistic energies by a laser pulse moving with a group velocity less than the speed of light is found via particle-in-cell simulation to be efficient for laser wake field acceleration.