Related papers: Controlled density-downramp injection in a beam-dr…
It is demonstrated that the performance of the self-modulated proton driver plasma wakefield accelerator (SM-PDPWA) is strongly affected by the reduced phase velocity of the plasma wave. Using analytical theory and particle-in-cell…
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…
A new regime of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration is discovered, in which the plasma nonlinearity increases the phase velocity of the excited wave compared to that of the protons. If the beam charge is much larger than minimally…
Laser-plasma accelerators present a promising alternative to conventional accelerators. To fully exploit the extreme amplitudes of the plasma fields and produce high-quality beams, precise control over electron injection into the…
Exploring new target schemes for laser wakefield accelerators is essential to meet the challenge of increasing repetition rates while ensuring stability and quality of the produced electron beams. The prototyping of a two-chamber gas cell…
Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration has been demonstrated in simulations to be capable of accelerating particles to the energy frontier in a single stage, but its potential is hindered by the fact that currently available proton…
We show through experiments that a transition from laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) regime to a plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) regime can drive electrons up to energies close to the GeV level. Initially, the acceleration mechanism…
We present few-femtosecond shadowgraphic snapshots taken during the non-linear evolution of the plasma wave in a laser wakefield accelerator with transverse synchronized few-cycle probe pulses. These snapshots can be directly associated…
A controllable injection scheme is key to producing high quality laser-driven electron beams and X-rays. Self-injection is the most straightforward scheme leading to high current and peak energies, but is susceptible to variations in laser…
Ultra-low emittance (tens of nm) beams can be generated in a plasma accelerator using ionization injection of electrons into a wakefield. An all-optical method of beam generation uses two laser pulses of different colors. A long-wavelength…
A plasma beam dump uses the collective oscillations of plasma electrons to absorb the kinetic energy of a particle beam. In this paper, a modified passive plasma beam dump scheme is proposed using either a gradient or stepped plasma profile…
X-ray free-electron lasers are large and complex machines, limited by electron beam brightness. Here we show through start-to-end simulations how to realise compact, robust and tunable X-ray lasers in the water window, based on ultra-bright…
New acceleration technology is mandatory for the future elucidation of fundamental particles and their interactions. A promising approach is to exploit the properties of plasmas. Past research has focused on creating large-amplitude plasma…
Plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFA) represent one of the promising new accelerator concepts that are now being developed intensively for future applications in high-energy physics and industry. Among the unresolved problems of practical…
Plasma wakefield acceleration using an electron filament offers stable, high-gradient, high-quality acceleration of positron beams analogous to the acceleration of electrons in the blowout regime. However, low energy-transfer efficiency is…
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…
The acceleration gradients generated in a laser- or beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator are typically three orders of magnitude greater than those produced by a conventional accelerator, and hence plasma accelerators can open a route…
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,…
In laser-driven wakefield, ionization induced injection is an efficient way to inject electrons in the plasma wave. A detailed study on the beam dynamics under the influence of beam loading effects, which can be controlled by the…
A tunable plasma-based energy dechirper has been developed at FLASHForward to remove the correlated energy spread of a 681~MeV electron bunch. Through the interaction of the bunch with wakefields excited in plasma the projected energy…