Comment on "Controlling the spectral shape of nonlinear Thomson scattering with proper laser chirping"

Abstract

Rykovanov, Geddes, Schroeder, Esarey and Leemans [Phys. Rev. Accel. Beams 19, 030701 (2016); hereafter RGSEL] have recently reported on the analytic derivation for the laser pulse frequency modulation (chirping) which controls spectrum broadening for high laser pulse intensities. We demonstrate here that their results are the same as the exact solutions reported in Terzić, Deitrick, Hofler and Krafft [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 074801 (2014); hereafter TDHK]. While the two papers deal with circularly and linearly polarized laser pulses, respectively, the difference in expressions for the two is just the usual factor of 1/2 present from going from circular to linear polarization. In addition, we note the authors used an approximation to the number of subsidiary peaks in the unchirped spectrum when a better solution is given in TDHK.