Laser wakefield acceleration with mid-IR laser pulses
Plasma Physics
2018-04-04 v2 Optics
Abstract
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 jets. Relativistic electron acceleration up to ~12 MeV occurs when the jet width exceeds the threshold scale length for relativistic self-focusing. We present scaling trends in the accelerated beam profiles, charge and spectra, which are supported by particle-in-cell simulations and time-resolved images of the interaction. For similarly scaled conditions, we observe significant increases in accelerated charge compared to previous experiments with near-infrared (\lambda=800 nm) pulses.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1801.05241,
title = {Laser wakefield acceleration with mid-IR laser pulses},
author = {D. Woodbury and L. Feder and V. Shumakova and C. Gollner and R. Schwartz and B. Miao and F. Salehi and A. Korolov and A. Pugžlys and A. Baltuška and H. M. Milchberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.05241},
year = {2018}
}