Coherence and superradiance from a plasma-based quasiparticle accelerator

Coherent light sources, such as free-electron lasers, provide bright beams for studies in biology, chemistry and physics. However, increasing the brightness of these sources requires progressively larger instruments, with the largest examples, such as the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, being several kilometres long. It would be transformative if this scaling trend could be overcome so that compact, bright sources could be employed at universities, hospitals and industrial laboratories. Here we address this issue by rethinking the basic principles of radiation physics. At the core of our work is the introduction of quasiparticle-based light sources that rely on the collective and macroscopic motion of an ensemble of light-emitting charges to evolve and radiate in ways that would be unphysical for single charges. The underlying concept allows for temporal coherence and superradiance in new configurations, such as in plasma accelerators, providing radiation with intriguing properties and clear experimental signatures spanning nearly ten octaves in wavelength, from the terahertz to the extreme ultraviolet. The simplicity of the quasiparticle approach makes it suitable for experimental demonstrations at existing laser and accelerator facilities and also extends well beyond this case to other scenarios such as nonlinear optical configurations. A new conceptual approach to light generation involving an ensemble of light-emitting charges may result in more compact superradiant light sources.