Meter-scale supersonic gas jets for multi-GeV laser-plasma accelerators
Abstract
Pushing the high energy frontier of laser wakefield electron acceleration (LWFA) to 10 GeV and beyond requires extending the propagation of relativistic intensity pulses to ~1 m in a low density () plasma waveguide. We present the development and characterization of two types of supersonic gas jet for meter-scale multi-GeV laser wakefield accelerators. The first type is a 30-cm long single-module gas jet, which demonstrates good axial uniformity using hydrogen, the preferred working gas for LWFA. The second type is a modular jet composed of multiple 11-cm-long modules. Longitudinal density profile control is demonstrated with a 2-module (22 cm long) hydrogen jet using gas valve trigger timing. A 1.0-m-long jet is then assembled from 9 modules, and generation of 1.0-m long hydrogen plasma is demonstrated using a femtosecond Bessel beam. To our knowledge, this is the longest gas jet laser plasma yet generated.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2411.10236,
title = {Meter-scale supersonic gas jets for multi-GeV laser-plasma accelerators},
author = {B. Miao and J. E. Shrock and E. Rockafellow and A. Sloss and H. M. Milchberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.10236},
year = {2024}
}