Related papers: High-charge relativistic electron bunches from a k…
We report on the first results of laser plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultrashort mid-infrared laser pulses (\lambda= 3.9 \mu m, 100 fs, 0.25 TW), which enable near- and above-critical density interactions with moderate-density gas…
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…
We demonstrate laser driven acceleration of electrons to MeV-scale energies at 1kHz repetition rate using <10mJ pulses focused on near-critical density He and H2 gas jets. Using the H2 gas jet, electron acceleration to ~0.5MeV in ~10fC…
The extreme electric fields created in high-intensity laser-plasma interactions could generate energetic ions far more compactly than traditional accelerators. Despite this promise, laser-plasma accelerators have remained stagnant at…
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…
An experimental investigation on laser plasma acceleration of electrons has been carried out using 3 TW, 45 fs duration titanium sapphire laser pulse interaction with nitrogen gas jet at intensity of 2x10^18 W/cm^2. We have observed stable…
We propose a method to generate femtosecond, relativistic and high-charge electron bunches using few-cycle and tightly focused radially polarized laser pulses. In this scheme, the incident laser pulse reflects off an overdense plasma that…
The interaction between a thin foil target and a circularly polarized laser light injected along an external magnetic field is investigated numerically by particle-in-cell simulations. A standing wave appears at the front surface of the…
A new laser-proton acceleration structure combined by two relativistic electron shells, a suprathermal electron shell and a thermal electron cloud is proposed for $a\gtrapprox80\sigma_0$, where a is the normalized laser field and $\sigma_0$…
We present a novel electron injection scheme for plasma wakefield acceleration. The method is based on recently proposed technique of fast electron generation via laser-solid interaction: a femtosecond laser pulse with the energy of tens of…
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…
The excitation of surface plasmons with ultra-intense ($I\sim 5\times 10^{19}$ W/cm$^2$), high contrast ($\sim 10^{12}$) laser pulses on periodically-modulated solid targets has been recently demonstrated to produce collimated bunches of…
We propose to use tightly focused lasers to generate high quality electron beams in laser wakefield accelerators. In this scheme, the expansion of the laser beam after the focal position enlarges the size of wakefield bubble, which reduces…
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,…
In laser-wakefield acceleration, an ultra-intense laser pulse is focused into an underdense plasma in order to accelerate electrons to relativistic velocities. In most cases, the pulses consist of multiple optical cycles and the interaction…
Radiation spectrum of extreme relativistic electrons and a probability of electron-positron pair production by energetic photons in a strong plasma wakefield are derived in the framework of a semiclassical approach. It is shown that that…
The Bubble regime of electron acceleration in ultra-relativistic laser plasma is considered. It has been shown that the bubble can produce ultra-short dense bunches of electrons with quasi-monoenergetic energy spectra. The first experiment…
Compact acceleration of a tightly collimated relativistic electron beam with high charge from a laser-plasma interaction has many unique applications. However, currently the well-known schemes, including laser wakefield acceleration from…
We propose a method to generate high field terahertz (THz) radiation with peak strength of GV/cm level in the THz frequency gap range 1-10 THz using a relativistic laser interaction with a gaseous plasma target. Due to the effect of local…
It is possible using current high intensity laser facilities to reach the quantum radiation reaction regime for energetic electrons. An experiment using a wakefield accelerator to drive GeV electrons into a counterpropagating laser pulse…