Laser Plasma Accelerators For Charged Particles

In order to accelerate charged particles, electric fields have to be applied. The highest electric fields reached in radio frequency particle accelerators are of the order of 10 MV/m. This field poses an upper limit for conventional accelerator technology because for higher fields the electrodes will be ionized. What if this limit is circumvented and the electric field is build up in an already ionized medium? The idea of using laser generated plasmas for particle acceleration has been conc...