Related papers: Matched Guiding and Controlled Injection in Dark-C…
Guiding relativistically intense laser pulses in low-density plasmas enables extended acceleration lengths in laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs), allowing for the production of multi-GeV electron beams. Quantitative interpretation of such…
The discovery of laser wakefield acceleration in gaseous plasma was a major milestone that could lead to a significant reduction of size and cost of large electron accelerators. For higher-energy laser-driven electron acceleration guiding…
Multi-GeV-class laser plasma accelerating modules are key components of laser plasma accelerators, because they can be used as a booster of an upstream plasma or conventional injector or as modular acceleration sections of a multi-staged…
Experimental measurements using the OMEGA EP laser facility demonstrated direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electron beams to (505 $\pm$ 75) MeV with (140 $\pm$ 30)~nC of charge from a low-density plasma target using a 400 J, picosecond…
Laser-plasma accelerators produce electric fields of the order of 100 GV/m, more than 1000 times larger than radio-frequency accelerators. Thanks to this unique field strength, they appear as a promising path to generate electron beams…
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…
We report on the depletion and power amplification of the driving laser pulse in a strongly-driven laser wakefield accelerator. Simultaneous measurement of the transmitted pulse energy and temporal shape indicate an increase in peak power…
Experimental results, supported by precise modelling, demonstrate optimisation of a plasma-based injector with intermediate laser pulse energy ($<1$ J), corresponding to a normalised vector potential $a_0 = 2.15$, using ionisation injection…
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…
Modern laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) often require plasma waveguides tens of cm long to propagate a high-intensity drive laser pulse. Tapering the longitudinal gas density profile in 10 cm scale gas jets could allow for single stage…
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…
The direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons in underdense plasmas can provide 100s of nC of electrons accelerated to near-GeV energies using currently available lasers. Here we demonstrate the key role of electron transverse…
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 show that laser wakefield electron accelerators in meter-scale, low density hydrodynamic plasma waveguides operate in a new nonlinear propagation regime where sustained beating of lowest order modes of the ponderomotively modified…
Hydrodynamic optically-field-ionized (HOFI) plasma channels up to 100mm long are investigated. Optical guiding is demonstrated of laser pulses with a peak input intensity of $6\times10^{17}$ W cm$^{-2}$ through 100mm long plasma channels…
We propose a novel scheme for controlling the injection of a high-quality electron bunch into a channel-guided laser plasma accelerator. This all-optical technique, constricted waveguide injection, creates a highly tunable controlled…
The plasma-based acceleration is an encouraging technique to overcome the limits of the accelerating gradient in the conventional RF acceleration. A plasma accelerator is able to provide accelerating fields up to hundreds of $GeV/m$, paving…
Achieving high-quality electron beams from laser-plasma accelerators critically relies on density tailoring to control electron dynamics during injection, acceleration, and extraction. We report on the experimental observation of electron…
We present an experimental demonstration of the efficient acceleration of electrons beyond 60 MeV using micro-channel plasma targets. We employed a high-contrast, 2.5 J, 32 fs short pulse laser interacting with a 5 \mu m inner diameter, 300…
We report on the first results of laser plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultrashort mid-infrared laser pulses (\lambda= 3.9 \mu m, 100 fs, 0.25 TW), which enable near- and above-critical density interactions with moderate-density gas…