Related papers: Physics of Laser-Wakefield Accelerators (LWFA)
The accelerating gradients in conventional linear accelerators are currently limited to 100 MV per meter. Plasma-based accelerators have the ability to sustain accelerating gradients which are several orders of magnitude greater than that…
Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) hold great potential to produce high-quality high-energy electron beams (e beams) and simultaneously bright x-ray sources via betatron radiation, which are very promising for pump-probe study in ultrafast…
Combination of advanced high power laser technology, new acceleration methods and achievements in undulator development opens a way to build compact, high brilliance Free Electron Laser (FEL) driven by a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA).…
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…
Matched beam loading in laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA), characterizing the state of flattening of the acceleration electric field along the bunch, leads to the minimization of energy spread at high bunch charges. Here, we demonstrate…
We examine a regime in which a linearly-polarized laser pulse with relativistic intensity irradiates a sub-critical plasma for much longer than the characteristic electron response time. A steady-state channel is formed in the plasma in…
A new electron acceleration mechanism is identified that develops when a relativistically intense laser irradiates the wedge of an over-dense plasma. This induces a diffracted electromagnetic wave with a significant longitudinal electric…
Fundamental questions on the nature of matter and energy have found answers thanks to the use of particle accelerators. Societal applications, such as cancer treatment or cancer imaging, illustrate the impact of accelerators in our current…
We present a conceptual design for a hybrid laser-to-beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator. In this setup, the output beams from a laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerator (LWFA) stage are used as input beams of a new beam-driven plasma…
We report on an experimental demonstration of laser wakefield electron acceleration using a sub-TW power laser by tightly focusing 30-fs laser pulses with only 8 mJ pulse energy on a 100 \mu m scale gas target. The experiments are carried…
A cosmic acceleration mechanism is introduced which is based on the wakefields excited by the Alfven shocks in a relativistically flowing plasma, where the energy gain per distance of a test particle is Lorentz invariant. We show that there…
Laser-plasma accelerators have become compact sources of ultrashort electron bunches at energies up to the gigaelectronvolt range thanks to the remarkable progress made over the past decade. A direct application of these electron bunches is…
Ionization injection triggered by short wavelength laser pulses inside a nonlinear wakefield driven by a longer wavelength laser is examined via multi-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. We find that very bright electron beams can be…
Tightly focused laser pulses as they diverge or converge in underdense plasma can generate wake waves, having local structures that are spherical waves. Here we report on theoretical study of relativistic spherical wake waves and their…
Plasma Wakefield Accelerators promise huge acceleration gradients that are three orders of magnitude greater than today's conventional radio frequency (RF) accelerators. These novel accelerators show also the potential of diminishing the…
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…
The rapid progress that plasma wakefield accelerators are experiencing is now posing the question as to whether they could be included in the design of the next generation of high-energy electron-positron colliders. However, the typical…
Plasma-based accelerators are compact and provide high gradients, yet their practical use has been limited by energy gain, stability, beam quality, and energy transfer efficiency. Here, we address several of these challenges simultaneously…
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 wake field excitation in an unmagnetized plasma by a multi-petawatt, femtosecond, pancake-shaped laser pulse is described both analytically and numerically in the regime with ultrarelativistic electron jitter velocities, when the plasma…