Related papers: Performance envelope of laser wakefield accelerato…
Plasma wakefields can enable very high accelerating gradients for frontier high energy particle accelerators, in excess of 10 GeV/m. To overcome limits on total acceleration achievable, specially shaped drive beams can be used in both…
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…
The physics of energy transfer between the laser and the plasma in laser wakefield accelerators is studied. We find that wake excitation by arbitrary laser shapes can be parameterized using the total pulse energy and pulse depletion length.…
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 measure the high intensity laser propagation throughout meter-scale, channel-guided LPAs by adjusting the length of the plasma channel on a shot-by-shot basis, showing high quality guiding of 500 TW laser pulses over 30 cm in a hydrogen…
Free Electron Lasers (FEL) are commonly regarded as the potential key application of laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA). It has been found that electron bunches exiting from state-of-the-art LWFAs exhibit a normalized 6-dimensional beam…
While laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) in the bubble regime demands ultra-short, high-peak-power laser pulses, operation in the self-modulated regime (SM-LWFA) works with more relaxed pulse conditions, albeit at the cost of lower beam…
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…
For plasma-wakefield accelerators to fulfil their potential for cost effectiveness, it is essential that their energy-transfer efficiency be maximized. A key aspect of this efficiency is the near-complete transfer of energy, or depletion,…
We present a novel electron injection scheme for plasma wakefield acceleration. The method is based on recently proposed technique of fast electron generation via laser-solid interaction: a femtosecond laser pulse with the energy of tens of…
We show that the properties of the electron beam and bright x-rays produced by a laser wakefield accelerator can be predicted if the distance over which the laser self-focuses and compresses prior to self-injection is taken into account. A…
In the context of plasma wakefield acceleration beam driven, we exploit a high density charge trailing bunch whose self-fields act by mitigating the energy spread increase via beam loading compensation, together with bunch self-contain…
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 acceleration schemes have attracted sustained interest as a pathway toward compact particle accelerators, owing to the large electric fields supported by plasmas. Although recent studies have demonstrated the excitation of…
We experimentally characterized terahertz (THz) radiation emitted from laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA) driven at 100-TW laser power. Simultaneous measurements of the laser energy, electron-bunch charge, and THz energy reveal a quadratic…
We revisit the matching conditions for self-guided laser pulse propagation in plasma and refine their formulation to maximize the energy of electrons produced via laser wakefield acceleration. Bayesian optimization, combined with…
High energy particle accelerators have been crucial in providing a deeper understanding of fundamental particles and the forces that govern their interactions. In order to increase the energy or reduce the size of the accelerator, new…
We have detected the presence of very high intensity surface waves that are excited during plasma waveguided laser wakefield acceleration. Wakefield acceleration can be enchanced by the introduction of an ``all optical" plasma waveguide…
We present significant advances in Laser Wakefield Acceleration (LWFA) operating at a 1 kHz repetition rate, employing a sub-TW, few-femtosecond laser and a continuously flowing hydrogen gas target. We conducted the first comprehensive…
The interaction of intense particle bunches with plasma can give rise to plasma wakes capable of sustaining gigavolt-per-metre electric fields, which are orders of magnitude higher than provided by state-of-the-art radio-frequency…