Relativistic pondermotive Hamiltonian for electrons in an intense laser field.
A Hamiltonian theory of the electron drift motion in an intense laser pulse is presented. The action-variational Lie perturbation method is utilized to derive the relativistic pondermotive Hamiltonian in a rigorous and systematic way. The results include: the electron drift motion in a linearly polarized pulse is slightly anisotropic because of the finite pulse duration effects, and its drift in a circularly polarized pulse contains a vortex component.
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Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08543, USA.