Related papers: Laser-Pulse and Electron-Bunch Plasma Wakefield Ac…
While laser-plasma accelerators have demonstrated a strong potential in the acceleration of electrons up to giga-electronvolt energies, few experimental tools for studying the acceleration physics have been developed. In this paper, we…
We present experimental results of vacuum laser acceleration (VLA) of electrons using radially polarized laser pulses interacting with a plasma mirror. Tightly focused radially polarized laser pulses have been proposed for electron…
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…
A laser pulse guided in a curved plasma channel can excite wakefields that steer electrons along an arched trajectory. As the electrons are accelerated along the curved channel, they emit synchrotron radiation. We present simple analytical…
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…
External injection of electron bunches longer than the plasma wavelength in a laser wakefield accelerator can lead to the generation of femtosecond ultrarelativistic bunches with a couple of percent energy spread. Extensive study has been…
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…
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…
The interaction of ultra-intense laser pulses with an underdense plasma is used in laser-plasma acceleration to create compact sources of ultrashort pulses of relativistic electrons and X-rays. The accelerating structure is a plasma wave,…
Ultrafast pump-probe experiments open the possibility to track fundamental material behaviour like changes in its electronic configuration in real time. To date, most of these experiments are performed using an electron or a high-energy…
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) can produce relativistic electron beams and various secondary particles in centimeter-long plasmas, making it a valuable particle source with important applications in many disciplines. In this work, we…
We present experimental results on a plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) driven by high-current electron beams from a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA). In this staged setup stable and high quality (low divergence and low energy spread)…
We study the long-term evolution (LTE) of plasma wakefields over multiple plasma-electron periods and few plasma-ion periods, much less than a recombination time. The evolution and relaxation of such a wakefield-perturbed plasma over these…
Plasma-based accelerators have achieved tremendous progress in the past few decades, thanks to the advances of high power lasers and the availability of high-energy and relativistic particle beams. However, the electrons (or positrons)…
We demonstrate experimentally the resonant excitation of plasma waves by trains of laser pulses. We also take an important first step to achieving an energy recovery plasma accelerator by showing that unused wakefield energy can be removed…
The plasma wakefield amplitudes which could be achieved via the modulation of a long proton bunch are investigated. We find that in the limit of long bunches compared to the plasma wavelength, the strength of the accelerating fields is…
Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron beams to GeV energies within centimetre distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, is indeed able to sustain huge electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing…
A review of the present situation and perspectives, in particular in the scope of a multi-Tev linear accelerator.
The present numerical investigation of a Plasma Wakefield Acceleration scenario in the weakly non linear regime with external injection is motivated by the upcoming campaigns at the SPARC\_LAB test facility where the final goal is to…
The one-dimensional wakefield generation equations are solved for increasing levels of non-linearity, to demonstrate how they contribute to the overall behaviour of a non-linear wakefield in a plasma. The effect of laser guiding is also…