In the E-157 experiment now being conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a 30 GeV electron beam of 2ϫ10 10 electrons in a 0.65-mm-long bunch is propagated through a 1.4-m-long lithium plasma of density up to 2ϫ10 14 e Ϫ /cm 3. The initial beam density is greater than the plasma density, and the head of the bunch expels the plasma electrons leaving behind a uniform ion channel with transverse focusing fields of up to several thousand tesla per meter. The initial transverse beam size with ϭ50-100 m is larger than the matched size of 5 m resulting in up to three beam envelope oscillations within the plasma. Time integrated optical transition radiation is used to study the transverse beam profile immediately before and after the plasma and to characterize the transverse beam dynamics as a function of plasma density. The head of the bunch deposits energy into plasma wakes, resulting in longitudinal accelerating fields which are witnessed by the tail of the same bunch. A time-resolved Cherenkov imaging system is located in an energy dispersive plane downstream of the plasma. It images the beam onto a streak camera allowing time-resolved measurements of the beam energy spectrum as a function of plasma density. Preliminary experimental data from the first three runs are compared to theory and computer simulations.
The electric field profiles of broad-bandwidth coherent terahertz (THz) pulses, emitted by laser-wakefieldaccelerated electron bunches, are studied. The near-single-cycle THz pulses are measured with two singleshot techniques in the temporal and spatial domains. Spectra of 0 -6 THz and peak fields up to Ӎ0.4 MV cm −1 are observed. The measured field substructure demonstrates the manifestation of spatiotemporal coupling at focus, which affects the interpretation of THz radiation as a bunch diagnostic and in highfield pump-probe experiments.
Higher-order laser modes are analyzed as a method to control focusing forces and improve the electron bunch quality in laser-plasma accelerators. In the linear wake regime, the focusing force is proportional to the transverse gradient of the laser intensity, which can be shaped by a superposition of modes. In particular, the transverse wakefield can be arbitrarily small in a region about the axis by adjusting the laser modes. Plasma channel effects, which prohibit the formation of the controlled-focusing region, can be mitigating by introducing a delay between the modes. Modes with parallel polarization produce a beat interference in the laser intensity, which lead to deflecting forces. This can be avoided by using modes with orthogonal polarization, different frequencies, or short pulses that do not overlap. Particle-in-cell simulations are performed of a laser-plasma accelerator in the quasilinear regime driven by high-order modes. Simulations show that, by including the first-order mode, the matched radius of the electron bunch is substantially increased, which for fixed bunch density and emittance implies an increase in the beam charge.
Detailed and reliable numerical modeling of laser-plasma accelerators, where a short and intense laser pulse interacts with an underdense plasma over distances of up to a meter, is a formidably challenging task. This is due to the great disparity among the length scales involved in the modeling, ranging from the micron scale of the laser wavelength to the meter scale of the total laser-plasma interaction length. The use of the time-averaged ponderomotive force approximation, where the laser pulse is described by means of its envelope, enables efficient modeling of laser-plasma accelerators by removing the need to model the details of electron motion at the laser wavelength scale. Furthermore, it allows simulations in cylindrical geometry which captures relevant 3D physics at 2D computational cost. A key element of any code based on the time-averaged ponderomotive force approximation is the laser envelope solver. In this paper we present the accurate and efficient envelope solver used in the code INF&RNO (INtegrated Fluid & paRticle simulatioN cOde). The features of the INF&RNO laser solver enable an accurate description of the laser pulse evolution deep into depletion even at a reasonably low resolution, resulting in significant computational speed-ups.
A new single-shot technique based on linear spectral interferometry between a temporally short reader pulse and a temporally long probe pulse is demonstrated for measuring the spatiotemporal phase and amplitude of an optical probe for use as an ultrafast diagnostic. The probe spatiotemporal field information is recovered, with a resolution set by the duration of the reader pulse, by applying a single Fourier transform operation to the interferogram image, without need of any reference data. The technique was used in conjunction with electro-optic sampling to measure waveforms of coherent, ultrashort THz pulses emitted by electron bunches from a laser-plasma accelerator with sub-50 fs resolution. The presence of strong spatiotemporal coupling in the THz waveforms and of complex temporal electron-bunch structure was determined.
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