Related papers: Enhanced electron yield from a laser-plasma accele…
A new electron acceleration mechanism is identified that develops when a relativistically intense laser irradiates the wedge of an over-dense plasma. This induces a diffracted electromagnetic wave with a significant longitudinal electric…
We have investigated numerically the coupling between a 10 \si{MeV} electron bunch of high charge (\SI{> 100}{pc}) with a laser generated accelerating plasma wave. Our results show that a high efficiency coupling can be achieved using a…
Guiding relativistically intense laser pulses in low-density plasmas enables extended acceleration lengths in laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs), allowing for the production of multi-GeV electron beams. Quantitative interpretation of such…
In the past two decades, laser-accelerated ion sources and their applications have been intensely researched. Recently, it has been shown through experiments that proton beams with characteristics comparable to those obtained with solid…
Structured light pulses hold significant promise for their ability to overcome dephasing in laser-wakefield accelerators, that should facilitate applications in high-energy physics and XFEL. Numerical studies have shown that sculpting a…
Bright betatron x-ray has been generated using an Ar clustering gas jet target irradiated with a 3 TW ultra-high contrast laser. The measured emission flux with photon energy > 2.4 keV reaches 2\times10^8 photons/shot. It is ten-fold…
We report the generation of MeV temperature electrons using sub-terawatt laser systems with a liquid methanol jet as a target. Remarkably, even at laser intensities of 1016W/cm2, liquid cylindrical (2D) 15 micron methanol jets produce…
The intrinsic constraints in the amplitude of the accelerating fields sustainable by radio-frequency accelerators demand for the pursuit of alternative and more compact acceleration schemes. Among these, plasma-based accelerators are…
In the present work, we demonstrate for the first time a proof-of-principle experiment for nanoparticle-assisted laser wakefield acceleration. The nanoparticles, generated through laser ablation of aluminium, were introduced into the plasma…
The plasma-based acceleration is an encouraging technique to overcome the limits of the accelerating gradient in the conventional RF acceleration. A plasma accelerator is able to provide accelerating fields up to hundreds of $GeV/m$, paving…
Laser-plasma accelerators offer a compact means of producing high-energy electron beams, but their performance is fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated electrons and the plasma wave. To overcome this limitation, we…
The phase velocity of the wakefield of a laser wakefield accelerator can, theoretically, be manipulated by shaping the longitudinal plasma density profile, thus controlling the parameters of the generated electron beam. We present an…
Density dowmramp injection has been demonstrated to be an elegant and efficient approach for generating high quality electron beams in laser wakefield accelerators. Yet, the charge of the produced beam is tens of pC per Joule of laser…
Ionization injection in a plasma wakefield accelerator was investigated experimentally using two lithium plasma sources of different lengths. The ionization of the helium gas, used to confine the lithium, injects electrons in the wake.…
Laser and beam driven wakefields promise orders of magnitude increases in electric field gradients for particle accelerators for future applications. Key areas to explore include the emittance properties of the generated beams and…
Beam loading is the phenomenon which limits the charge and the beam quality in plasma based accelerators. An experimental study conducted with a laser-plasma accelerator is presented. Beam loading manifests itself through the decrease of…
Novel schemes for generating ultra-low emittance electron beams have been developed in past years and promise compact particle sources with excellent beam quality suitable for future high-energy physics experiments and free-electron lasers.…
We present the first experimental confirmation that a laser-wakefield accelerator produced by a flying focus pulse is able to maintain the coherent structures necessary to accelerate electrons to relativistic energies. Through a combination…
Laser-plasma accelerators produce electric fields of the order of 100 GV/m, more than 1000 times larger than radio-frequency accelerators. Thanks to this unique field strength, they appear as a promising path to generate electron beams…
We show that the properties of the electron beam and bright x-rays produced by a laser wakefield accelerator can be predicted if the distance over which the laser self-focuses and compresses prior to self-injection is taken into account. A…