No abstract

Ionization-induced injection mechanism was introduced in 2010 to reduce the laser intensity threshold for controllable electron trapping in laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA). However, usually it generates electron beams with continuous energy spectra. Subsequently, a dual-stage target separating the injection and acceleration processes was regarded as essential to achieve narrow energy-spread electron beams by ionization injection. Recently, we numerically proposed a self-truncation scenario of the ionization injection process based upon overshooting of the laser-focusing in plasma which can reduce the electron injection length down to a few hundred micrometers, leading to accelerated beams with extremely low energy-spread in a single-stage. Here, using 100 TW-class laser pulses we report experimental observations of this injection scenario in centimeter-long plasma leading to the generation of narrow energy-spread GeV electron beams, demonstrating its robustness and scalability. Compared with the self-injection and dual-stage schemes, the self-truncated ionization injection generates higher-quality electron beams at lower intensities and densities, and is therefore promising for practical applications.

Hard X-ray sources from femtosecond (fs) laser-produced plasmas, including the betatron X-rays from laser wakefield-accelerated electrons, have compact sizes, fs pulse duration and fs pump-probe capability, making it promising for wide use in material and biological sciences. Currently the main problem with such betatron X-ray sources is the limited average flux even with ultra-intense laser pulses. Here, we report ultra-bright betatron X-rays can be generated using a clustering gas jet target irradiated with a small size laser, where a ten-fold enhancement of the X-ray yield is achieved compared to the results obtained using a gas target. We suggest the increased X-ray photon is due to the existence of clusters in the gas, which results in increased total electron charge trapped for acceleration and larger wiggling amplitudes during the acceleration. This observation opens a route to produce high betatron average flux using small but high repetition rate laser facilities for applications.

We present the experimentally generated electron bunch from laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA) with a charge of 620 pC and a maximum energy up to 0.6 GeV by irradiating 80 TW laser pulses at a 3 mm Helium gas jet. The charge of injected electrons is much larger than the normal scaling laws of LWFA in bubble regime. We also got a quasi-monoenergetic electron beam with energy peaked at 249 MeV and a charge of 68 pC with the similar laser conditions but lower plasma density. As confirmed by 2D particle-in-cell simulations, the boosted bunch charge is due to the continuous injection caused by the self-steepening and self-compression of a laser pulse. During the nonlinear evolution of the laser pulse, the bubble structure broadens and stretches, leading to a longer dephasing length and larger beam charge.

High-flux energetic protons whose maximum energies are up to 4MeV are generated by an intense femtosecond titanium:sapphire laser pulse interacting with 7.5, 12.5, and 25μm thick polyimide tape targets. Laser pulse with an energy of 1.7J and with a duration of 34fs is focused with an f/3.4 parabolic mirror giving an intensity of 3×1019Wcm−2. The main pulse to amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) intensity contrast ratio is 2.5×107. The conversion efficiency from the laser energy into the proton kinetic energies is achieved to be ∼3%, which is comparable to or even higher than those achieved in the previous works; using nanometer-thick targets, in combination with the short-pulse lasers that have almost the same pulse width and the intensity but different main pulse to ASE intensity contrast of ∼1010 [Neely et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 021502 (2006)], in which the authors claim that the main mechanism is target normal sheath acceleration; or using the 7.5μm thick polyimide target, in combination with the short-pulse laser, which has almost the same pulse width and the intensity, but the main pulse to ASE intensity contrast ratio was controlled to be 2.5×105 [Yogo et al., Phys. Rev. E 77, 016401 (2008)], in which the authors claim the efficient acceleration by the mechanism of the underdense plasma model. The contrast ratio of the present experiment is in between these two experiments. The possible mechanism of this regime is discussed.

It is known that as a laser wakefield passes through a downward density transition in a plasma some portion of the background electrons are trapped in the laser wakefield and the trapped electrons are accelerated to relativistic high energies over a very short distance. In this study, by using a two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation, we suggest an experimental scheme that can manipulate electron trapping and acceleration across a parabolic plasma density channel, which is easier to produce and more feasible to apply to the laser wakefield acceleration experiments. In this study, 2D PIC simulation results for the physical characteristics of the electron bunches that are emitted from the parabolic density plasma channel are reported in great detail.

Based on two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we investigated the electron beam's transverse oscillations by temporally asymmetric laser pulses in laser wakefield acceleration. Of particular interest in this article are the effects of ultrashort laser pulses having sharp rising and slow falling time scales. In this situation, the accelerated electron beam interacts directly with the laser field and undergoes transverse oscillations due to a phase-slip with the laser field. This oscillation can be matched with the betatron oscillation due to the focusing force of the ions, which can lead to a large transverse oscillation amplitude due to the resonance between them. Furthermore, in this case, the electron beam can be microbunched at the laser wavelength, which may provide the possibility for generation of a coherent synchrotron radiation.

We report in this paper on full scale 2D particle-in-cell simulations investigating laser wakefield acceleration. First we describe our findings of electron beam generation by a laser propagating through a single gas jet. Using realistic parameters which are relevant for the experimental setup in our laboratory we find that the electron beam resulting after the propagation of a 0.8 mm, 50 fs laser through a 1.5 mm gas jet has properties that would make it useful for further acceleration. Our simulations show that the electron beam is generated when the laser exits the gas jet, and the properties of the generated beam, especially its energy, depend only weakly on most properties of the gas jet. We therefore propose to use the first gas jet as a plasma cathode and then use a second gas jet placed immediately behind the first to provide additional acceleration. Our simulations of this proposed setup indicate the feasibility of this idea and also suggest ways to optimize the quality of the resulting beam.