Related papers: Self-modulated laser wakefield accelerators as x-r…
We propose and use a technique to measure the transverse emittance of a laser-wakefield accelerated beam of relativistic electrons. The technique is based on the simultaneous measurements of the electron beam divergence given by…
We report on systematic and high-precision measurements of dephasing, an effect that fundamentally limits the performance of laser wakefield accelerators. Utilizing shock-front injection, a technique providing stable, tunable and…
Plasma-based acceleration schemes have attracted sustained interest as a pathway toward compact particle accelerators, owing to the large electric fields supported by plasmas. Although recent studies have demonstrated the excitation of…
All-optical controlled injection and acceleration of electrons in a laser wakefield has recently been achieved (Faure et al, Nature v. 444 p. 737, 2006). Injection was made using a second counterpropagating laser pulse with the same…
Self-guided femtosecond laser pulses propagating in low-pressure gas can generate plasma filaments, establishing a new framework for plasma wakefield acceleration. Unlike conventional schemes relying on mechanically confined or preformed…
Plasma-Based Acceleration (PBA) has emerged as a promising approach to achieve ultra-high gradient particle acceleration. While extensive PBA studies have been conducted using laser, electron, and proton drivers, significant challenges…
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…
Laser wakefield accelerators promise to revolutionise many areas of accelerator science. However, one of the greatest challenges to their widespread adoption is the difficulty in control and optimisation of the accelerator outputs due to…
A design for a compact x-ray light source (CXLS) with flux and brilliance orders of magnitude beyond existing laboratory scale sources is presented. The source is based on inverse Compton scattering of a high brightness electron bunch on a…
Multi-GeV-class laser plasma accelerating modules are key components of laser plasma accelerators, because they can be used as a booster of an upstream plasma or conventional injector or as modular acceleration sections of a multi-staged…
The radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) of charged particles has been considered a challenging task in laser particle acceleration. Laser-driven proton/ion acceleration has attracted considerable interests due to its underlying physics…
Relativistic laser wakefield acceleration is characterized by an unsurpassed accelerating gradient, which is very suitable for electron acceleration over short distances and could be a promising candidate for next-generation compact…
Understanding dense matter hydrodynamics is critical for predicting plasma behavior in environments relevant to laser-driven inertial confinement fusion. Traditional diagnostic sources face limitations in brightness, spatiotemporal…
Table-top laser-plasma ion accelerators seldom achieve narrow energy spreads, and never without serious compromises in efficiency, particle yield, etc. Using massive computer simulations, we identify a self-organizing scheme that exploits…
Accelerating particles to high energies in plasma wakefields is considered to be a promising technique with good energy efficiency and high gradient. While important progress has been made in plasma-based electron acceleration, positron…
The ion acceleration driven by a laser pulse at intensity $I = 10^{20} - 10^{22} $W/cm$^2\times(\mu$m$/\lambda)^2$ from a double layer target is investigated with multi-parametric Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations. For targets with a wide…
A controllable injection scheme is key to producing high quality laser-driven electron beams and X-rays. Self-injection is the most straightforward scheme leading to high current and peak energies, but is susceptible to variations in laser…
We propose a hybrid laser-driven ion acceleration scheme using a combination target of a solid foil and a density-tailored background plasma. In the first stage, a sub-relativistic proton beam can be generated by the radiation pressure…
We reconstruct spectra of secondary x-rays generated from a 500 MeV - 2 GeV laser plasma electron accelerator. A compact (7.5 $\times$ 7.5 $\times$ 15 cm), modular x-ray calorimeter made of alternating layers of absorbing materials and…
Motivated by experiments employing ps-long, kilojoule laser pulses, we examined x-ray emission in a finite-length underdense plasma irradiated by such a pulse using two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. We found that, in addition to…