Laser methods of acceleration of charged particles

Interaction of an ultrashort relativistically strong laser pulse with a plasma is studied. The ultrashort pulse excites the regular wake plasma wave with the electric field accelerating charged particles. With the increase of pulse length, instabilities, destroying the regular electric field structure, become more and more significant. The most important effects of pulse transverse nonuniformity are self-focusing and radiation channelling. Excitation of the regular electric fields and effective acceleration of charged particles occur only in the regimes corresponding to weak exceeding of the self-focusing threshold.