Related papers: Self-seeded photon acceleration by electron beam-d…
We propose a new and simple strategy for controlled ionization-induced trapping of electrons in a beam-driven plasma accelerator. The presented method directly exploits electric wakefields to ionize electrons from a dopant gas and capture…
At Shanghai Jiao Tong University, we have established a research laboratory for advanced acceleration research based on high-power lasers and plasma technologies. In a primary experiment based on the laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA)…
Plasma-based accelerators have achieved tremendous progress in the past few decades, thanks to the advances of high power lasers and the availability of high-energy and relativistic particle beams. However, the electrons (or positrons)…
We demonstrate a novel approach to the generation of femtosecond electron bunch trains via laser-driven wakefield acceleration. We use two independent high-intensity laser pulses, a drive, and injector, each creating their own plasma wakes.…
We discovered a simple regime where a near-critical plasma irradiated by a laser of experimentally available intensity can self-organize to produce positrons and accelerate them to ultra-relativistic energies. The laser pulse piles up…
Recent progress in laser-driven plasma acceleration now enables the acceleration of electrons to several gigaelectronvolts. Taking advantage of these novel accelerators, ultra-short, compact and spatially coherent X-ray sources called…
Simulations of proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerators have demonstrated substantially higher accelerating gradients compared to conventional accelerators and the viability of accelerating electrons to the energy frontier in a single…
We show the laser-driven acceleration of unprecedented, collimated ($ 2 \ \mathrm{mrad} $ divergence), and quasi-monoenergetic ($ 25 \ \% $ energy spread) electron beams with energy up to $ 50 \ \mathrm{MeV} $ at $ 1 \ \mathrm{kHz} $…
Laser wakefield accelerators rely on relativistically moving micron-sized plasma cavities that provide extremely high electric field >100GV/m. Here, we demonstrate transverse shaping of the plasma cavity to produce controlled sub-GeV…
The concept of a hybrid laser wakefield/direct laser plasma accelerator is proposed. Relativistic electrons undergoing resonant betatron oscillations inside the plasma bubble created by a laser pulse are accelerated by gaining energy…
It is shown that co-linear injection of electrons or positrons into the wakefield of the self-modulating particle beam is possible and ensures high energy gain. The witness beam must co-propagate with the tail part of the driver, since the…
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…
The quality of electron beams produced from plasma-based accelerators, i.e., normalized brightness and energy spread, has made transformative progress in the past several decades in both simulation and experiment. Recently, full-scale…
An ultra-short (about 30 fs) petawatt laser pulse focused with a wide focal spot (about 100 microns) in a rarefied plasma (electron density of order 10^{17} per cm^3) excites a nonlinear plasma wakefield which can accelerate injected…
A method based on laser wakefield acceleration with controlled ionization injection triggered by another frequency-tripled laser is proposed, which can produce electron bunches with low energy spread. As two color pulses co-propagate in the…
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 radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) of charged particles has been considered a challenging task in laser particle acceleration. Laser-driven proton/ion acceleration has attracted considerable interests due to its underlying physics…
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-driven radiation sources are attracting increasing attention for several materials science applications. While laser-driven ions, electrons and neutrons have already been considered to carry out the elemental characterization of…
We measure the effects of transverse wakefields driven by a relativistic proton bunch in plasma with densities of $2.1\times10^{14}$ and \unit[$7.7\times10^{14}$]{electrons/cm$^3$}. We show that these wakefields periodically defocus the…