A dense sheet of electrons accelerated to close to the speed of light can act as a tuneable
mirror that can generate bright bursts of laser-like radiation in the short wavelength range
simply via the reflection of a counter-propagating laser pulse. This thesis investigates the
generation of such a relativistic electron mirror structure in a series of experiments
accompanied by computer simulations. It is shown that such relativistic mirror can indeed be
created from the interaction of a high-intensity laser pulse with a nanometer-scale ultrathin
foil. The reported work gives a intriguing insight into the complex dynamics of high-intensity
laser-nanofoil interactions and constitutes a major step towards the development of a
relativistic mirror which could potentially generate bright burst of X-rays on a micro-scale.
