Related papers: Nonlinear wakefields and electron injection in clu…
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…
Wakefield wavelengths associated with solid-state plasmas greatly limit the accelerating length. An alternative approach employs 2D carbon-based nanomaterials, like graphene or carbon nanotubes (CNTs), configured into structured targets.…
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…
Injection of well-defined, high-quality electron populations into plasma waves is a key challenge of plasma wakefield accelerators. Here, we report on the first experimental demonstration of plasma density downramp injection in an…
The use of structured light to control the phase velocity of the wake in laser-wakefield accelerators has generated significant interest for its ability to mitigate electron dephasing. Combining the diffraction-free properties of Bessel…
The self-modulation instability is a key effect that makes possible the usage of nowadays proton beams as drivers for plasma wakefield acceleration. Development of the instability in uniform plasmas and in plasmas with a small density…
In the present work, we demonstrate for the first time a proof-of-principle experiment for nanoparticle-assisted laser wakefield acceleration. The nanoparticles, generated through laser ablation of aluminium, were introduced into the plasma…
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…
We report the first experimental observation of carrier-envelope phase-driven energy bunching in laser wakefield acceleration. Using a few-cycle (~9 fs), multi-terawatt laser pulse and ionization injection in a helium-nitrogen gas mixture,…
Plasma wakefield acceleration, either laser driven or electron-bunch driven, has been demonstrated to hold great potential. However, it is not obvious how to scale these approaches to bring particles up to the TeV regime. In this paper, we…
We analyze the equilibrium configuration for a modulated beam with sharp boundaries exposed to the fields self-generated by the interaction with a plasma. Through a semi-analytical approach we show the presence of multiple equilibrium…
The evolution of beam phase space in ionization-induced injection into plasma wakefields is studied using theory and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The injection process causes special longitudinal and transverse phase mixing leading…
The effects of the initial spin orientation on the final electron beam polarization via laser wakefield acceleration in pre-polarized plasma are investigated theoretically and numerically. From a variation of the initial spin direction, the…
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) and its particle-driven counterpart, plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA), are commonly treated as separate, though related branches of high-gradient plasma-based acceleration. However, novel proposed…
Though wakefield acceleration in crystal channels has been previously proposed, x-ray wakefield acceleration has only recently become a realistic possibility since the invention of the single-cycled optical laser compression technique. We…
In this dissertation, a fully object-oriented, fully relativistic, multi-dimensional Particle-In-Cell code was developed and applied to answer key questions in plasma-based accelerator research. The simulations increase the understanding of…
Laser-driven plasma accelerators can generate accelerating gradients three orders of magnitude larger than radio-frequency accelerators and have achieved beam energies above 1 GeV in centimetre long stages. However, the pulse repetition…
We show using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and theoretical analysis that a high-quality electron beam whose density is modulated at angstrom scales can be generated directly using density downramp injection in a periodically modulated…
The intrinsic constraints in the amplitude of the accelerating fields sustainable by radio-frequency accelerators demand for the pursuit of alternative and more compact acceleration schemes. Among these, plasma-based accelerators are…
Shot-to-shot fluctuations in electron beams from laser wakefield accelerators present a significant challenge for applications. Here, we show that instead of using such fluctuating beams directly, employing them to drive a plasma…