Field-Analysis of Vacuum Free-Space LaserAcceleration from Rough-Surface and Absorbing Thin Boundaries

This script presents a field-based analysis of laser acceleration of relativistic electrons in a free space that is bounded by a thin scattering or by a thin absorbing surface. The laser acceleration process is analyzed in terms of the inverse-radiation formalism and compared to the more familiar field path-integral analysis method. When the scattering boundary is modeled as a linear-index medium the predictions for laser-electron interactions from both field methods are found to agree. For the absorbing boundary both interaction pictures are also found to agree provided that the inverse radiation method is generalized to include absorption of energy from the boundary that is modeled as a linear ohmic-loss object.