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ABSTRACT Subluminal and superluminal light pulses have attracted considerable attention in recent decades1,2,3,4, opening perspectives in telecommunications, optical storage and fundamental

physics5. Usually achieved in matter, superluminal propagation has also been demonstrated in vacuum with quasi-Bessel beams6,7 or spatio-temporal couplings8,9. Although, in the first case,

the propagation was diffraction free, but with hardly controllable pulse velocities and limited to moderate intensities, in the second, high tunability was achieved, but with substantially

lengthened pulse durations. Here we report a new concept that extends these approaches to relativistic intensities and ultrashort pulses by mixing spatio-temporal couplings and quasi-Bessel

beams to independently control the light velocity and intensity. When used to drive a laser-plasma accelerator10, this concept leads to a new regime that is dephasing free, where the

electron beam energy gain increases by more than one order of magnitude. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview of subscription content, access via your

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subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF SEQUENTIAL PHASE-LOCKED OPTICAL GATING OF FREE ELECTRONS Article

Open access 02 November 2023 SPATIO-TEMPORAL COUPLING CONTROLLED LASER FOR ELECTRON ACCELERATION Article Open access 05 July 2022 SEEDED FREE-ELECTRON LASER DRIVEN BY A COMPACT LASER PLASMA

ACCELERATOR Article Open access 05 December 2022 DATA AVAILABILITY The data that support the plots and findings of this paper are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable

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Comput. Phys._ 228, 1803–1814 (2009). Article  ADS  Google Scholar  Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We acknowledge support from the European Research Council through the project XFive

(grant no. 339128), the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under reference ANR-19-TERC-0001-01 (project TGV), Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman, Israel Science Foundation, VATAT

support and the French embassy in Israel through a Chateaubriand fellowship. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée, Ecole polytechnique – ENSTA – CNRS

– Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France C. Caizergues, S. Smartsev, V. Malka & C. Thaury * Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot,

Israel S. Smartsev & V. Malka Authors * C. Caizergues View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * S. Smartsev View author publications You can

also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * V. Malka View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * C. Thaury View author publications You

can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS C.C. and C.T. jointly proposed the concept of phase-locked acceleration, using axiparabola and spatio-temporal

couplings. The idea was then developed by C.C. with advice from V.M. and C.T. C.C. and C.T. established the theoretical background, while C.C. and S.S. developed codes for optimizing and

simulating axiparabola focus. Simulations were carried out by C.C. Finally, C.C. and C.T. wrote the manuscript with help from V.M. and S.S. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to C.

Caizergues. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS C.T. and S.S. have filed a patent application (no. EP18305810.6) on axiparabola. The authors declare no other competing interests.

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SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary discussion and Figs. 1 and 2. RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Caizergues, C., Smartsev, S.,

Malka, V. _et al._ Phase-locked laser-wakefield electron acceleration. _Nat. Photonics_ 14, 475–479 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0657-2 Download citation * Received: 18

February 2019 * Accepted: 03 June 2020 * Published: 06 July 2020 * Issue Date: August 2020 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0657-2 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following

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