Related papers: Sub-femtosecond electron bunches created by direct…
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…
Generation of attosecond bunches of energetic electrons offers significant potential from ultrafast physics to novel radiation sources. However, it is still a great challenge to stably produce such electron beams with lasers, since the…
In the Phase 2 of the AWAKE first experimental run (from May to November 2018), an electron beam was used to probe and test proton-driven wakefield acceleration in a rubidium plasma column. In this work, we analyze the overall charge…
We revisit the matching conditions for self-guided laser pulse propagation in plasma and refine their formulation to maximize the energy of electrons produced via laser wakefield acceleration. Bayesian optimization, combined with…
We report a laser wakefield acceleration of electron beams up to 130 MeV from laser-driven 4-mm long nitrogen gas jet. By using a moderate laser intensity (3.5*10^18 W.cm^(-2)) and relatively low plasma densities (0.8*10^18 cm^(-3) to…
The dynamic process of a laser or particle beam propagating from vacuum into underdense plasma has been investigated theoretically. Our theoretical model combines a Lagrangian fluid model with the classic quasistatic wakefield theory. It is…
We present an efficient method to produce laser-triggered proton pulses well below 500 ps pulse width at keV energies. We use femtosecond photoelectron pulses emitted from a cathode to enable ultrafast electron-stimulated desorption of…
A novel approach for positron injection and acceleration in laser driven plasma wakefield is proposed. A theoretical model is developed and confirmed through PIC simulation. One ring-shaped beam and one co-axially propagating Gaussian beam…
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) in a gas cell target separating injection and acceleration section has been investigated to produce high-quality electron beams. A detailed study has been performed on controlling the quality of…
We introduce a solution for producing ultrashort ($\sim$fs) high charge ($\sim$pC) from ultra-compact guns utilizing single-cycle THz pulses. We show that the readily available THz pulses with energies as low as 20 ?J are sufficient to…
Using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we further investigate the electron and ion acceleration from femtosecond laser-plasma peeler scheme which was proposed in our recent paper (Shen et al 2021 Phys. Rev. X 11 041002). In…
The effect of laser focusing conditions on the evolution of relativistic plasma waves in laser wakefield accelerators is studied both experimentally and with particle-in-cell simulations. For short focal length ($w_0 < \lambda_p$)…
Laser wakefield acceleration, characterized by the extremely high electric field gradient exceeding 100GV/m, is regarded as a compact and cost affordable technology for the next generation of particle colliders and light sources. However,…
Laser wakefield acceleration permits the generation of ultra-short, high-brightness relativistic electron beams on a millimeter scale. While those features are of interest for many applications, the source remains constraint by the poor…
An enhanced ionization injection scheme using a tightly focused laser pulse with intensity near the ionization potential to trigger the injection process in a mismatched pre-plasma channel has been proposed and examined via…
Beam-driven collinear wakefield accelerators (CWAs) that operate by using slow-wave structures or plasmas hold great promise toward reducing the size of contemporary accelerators. Sustainable acceleration of charged particles to high…
The quantum mechanical motion of electrons in molecules and solids occurs on the sub-femtosecond timescale. Consequently, the study of ultrafast electronic phenomena requires the generation of laser pulses shorter than 1 fs and of…
Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron bunches to gigaelectronvolt energies within centimetre distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, generates large electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing…
Using a periodic electron beam bunch train to resonantly excite plasma wakefields in the quasi-nonlinear (QNL) regime has distinct advantages over employing a single, higher charge bunch. Resonant excitation in the QNL regime can produce…
The FLASHForward experimental facility is a high-performance test-bed for precision plasma-wakefield research, aiming to accelerate high-quality electron beams to GeV-levels in a few centimetres of ionised gas. The plasma is created by…