Related papers: Low transverse emittance electron bunches from two…
A long laser beam propagating through an underdense plasma produces a positively charged ion channel by expelling plasma electrons in the transverse direction. We consider the dynamics of a test electron in a resulting two-dimensional…
The effect of an external transverse magnetic field on ionization injection of electrons in a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) is investigated by theoretical analysis and particle-in-cell simulations. On application of a few tens of Tesla…
We measure the emission of energetic electrons from the interaction between ultrashort laser pulses and a solid density plasma in the relativistic regime. We detect an electron beam that only appears with few-cycle pulses (< 10 fs) and…
Relativistic wakes produced by intense laser or particle beams propagating through plasmas are being considered as accelerators for next generation of colliders and coherent light sources. Such wakes have been shown to accelerate electrons…
By means of hollow plasma, multiple proton bunches work well in driving nonlinear plasma wakefields and accelerate electrons to energy frontier with preserved beam quality. However, the acceleration of positrons is different because the…
Terahertz pulse generation by ultra-intense two-color laser fields ionizing gases with near- to far-infrared carrier wavelength is studied from particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. For long wavelength ($10.6\ \mu$m) promoting a large ratio…
To meet requirements of high performance THz-FEL (Free Electron Laser), a compact scheme of FEL injector was proposed. Thermionic cathode was chosen to emit electrons instead of photo-cathode with complex structure and high cost. The…
We present an experimental evidence of a bunch compression scheme that uses a traveling wave accelerating structure as a compressor. The bunch length issued from a laser-driven radio-frequency electron source was compressed by a factor >3…
Ultrashort electron bunches are useful for applications like ultrafast imaging and coherent radiation production. Currently, however, the shortest achievable bunches, at attosecond time scales, have only been realized in the single or very…
The process of ionization of a hydrogen atom by a short infrared laser pulse is studied in the regime of very large pulse intensity, in the dipole approximation. Let $A$ denote the integral of the electric field of the pulse over time at…
Soft recollisions are laser-driven distant collisions of an electron with its parent ion. Such collisions may cause an energy bunching, since electrons with different initial drift momenta can acquire impacts, which exactly counterbalance…
We report on the stable and continuous operation of a kilohertz laser-plasma accelerator. Electron bunches with 2.6 pC charge and 2.5 MeV peak energy were generated via injection and trapping in a downward plasma density ramp. This density…
The regimes of quasi-mono-energetic electron beam generation were experimentally studied in the sub-relativistic intensity laser plasma interaction. The observed electron acceleration regime is unfolded with two-dimensional-particle-in-cell…
We propose a novel scheme for generating and accelerating simultaneously a dozen-GeV isolated attosecond electron bunch from an electron beam-driven hollow-channel plasma target. During the beam-target interaction, transverse oscillations…
Plasma acceleration is considered a prospective technology for building a compact multi-TeV electron-positron collider in the future. The challenge of this endeavor is greater for positrons than for the electrons because usually the…
Relativistic electrons are easily generated by self-injection when an intense laser drives a wakefield in a plasma, giving rise to wide electron energy distributions. Several mechanisms involving additional laser beams or different gas…
Using 1D and 2D PIC simulations, we describe and model the backward ejection of electron bunches when a laser pulse reflects off an overdense plasma with a sharp density gradient on its front side. The dependence on the laser intensity and…
A low energy proton source for non-neutral plasma experiments was developed. Electrons from a hot filament ionize H$_2$ gas inside a geometrically compensated Penning trap to produce protons via dissociative ionization. A rotating wall…
The dynamics of electron injection in the direct laser acceleration (DLA) regime was investigated by means of three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and theoretical analysis. It is shown that when an ultra-intense laser pulse…
This dissertation explores the interaction between high-intensity lasers and plasmas to accelerate electrons and produce radiation via experimental and computational efforts. The laser pulses used in this dissertation have ultrashort…