Related papers: Laser wakefield acceleration with high-power, few-…
Propagation distances of intense laser pulses and high-charge electron beams through the plasma are, respectively, limited by diffraction and self-deceleration. This imposes severe constraints on the performance of the two major advanced…
We present methods and preliminary observations of two pulse Direct Laser Acceleration in a Laser-Driven Plasma Accelerator. This acceleration mechanism uses a second co-propagating laser pulse to overlap and further accelerate electrons in…
Although, for current laser pulse energies, the weakly nonlinear regime of LWFA is known to be the optimal for reaching the highest possible electron energies, the capabilities of upcoming large laser systems will provide the possibility of…
Advances in ultra-intense laser technology are enabling, for the first time, relativistic intensities at mid-infrared (mid-IR) wavelengths. Anticipating further experimental research in this domain, we present high-resolution two…
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-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…
Laser wakefield acceleration of electrons usually offers an axisymmetry around the laser propagation axis. Thus, the accelerating electrons that are focused on axis often execute small transverse oscillations. In this Article, we propose a…
Multistage coupling of laser-wakefield accelerators is essential to overcome laser energy depletion for high-energy applications such as TeV level electron-positron colliders. Current staging schemes feed subsequent laser pulses into stages…
A new electron injection scheme is proposed in sub-relativistic plasma wakefield accelerators. A transverse laser ionizes a dopant gas and ponderomotively accelerates the released electrons in the direction of wake propagation. This process…
The acceleration of charged particles is fundamental not only for experimental studies in particle physics but also for applications in fields such as semiconductor manufacturing and medical therapies. However, conventional accelerators…
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…
A simplified model describing the PWFA (plasma wakefield acceleration) transverse instability in the form of a wake function parameterized only with an effective cavity aperture radius $a$ is benchmarked against PIC-simulations. This wake…
In the frame of laser-driven wakefield acceleration, the main characteristics oflaser propagation and plasma wave excitation are described, with an emphasis onthe role of propagation distance for electron acceleration. To…
We propose a new and simple strategy for controlled ionization-induced trapping of electrons in a beam-driven plasma accelerator. The presented method directly exploits electric wakefields to ionize electrons from a dopant gas and capture…
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…
A laser pulse traveling through a plasma can excite large amplitude plasma waves that can be used to accelerate relativistic electron beams in a very short distance---a technique called laser wakefield acceleration. Many wakefield…
The scaling laws for laser wakefield acceleration in the nonlinear, self-guided regime [Lu et al. Phys. Rev. Spec. Top. Accel. Beams 10, 061301 (2007)] are examined in detail using the quasi-3D version of the particle-in-cell code OSIRIS.…
We study the energetics of wake excitation during the laser-plasma interaction in application to laser wakefield accelerators. We find that both the wake amplitude and the accelerating efficiency (transformer ratio) can be maximized by…
The energy spread in laser-wakefield accelerators is primarily limited by the energy-chirp introduced during the injection and acceleration processes. Here we propose and demonstrate the use of longitudinal density tailoring to adapt the…
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…