Extensive study of electron acceleration by relativistic surface plasmons
The excitation of surface plasmons with ultra-intense (I ∼ 5 × 1019 W/cm2), high contrast (∼1012) laser pulses on periodically modulated solid targets has been recently demonstrated to produce collimated bunches of energetic electrons along the target surface [Fedeli et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 015001 (2016)]. Here, we report an extensive experimental and numerical study aimed to a complete char