Acceleration of on-axis and ring-shaped electron beams in wakefields driven by Laguerre-Gaussian pulses

Abstract

The acceleration of electron beams with multiple transverse structures in wakefields driven by Laguerre-Gaussian pulses has been studied through three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell simulations. Under different laser-plasma conditions, the wakefield shows different transverse structures. In general cases, the wakefield shows a donut-like structure and it accelerates the ring-shaped hollow electron beam. When a lower plasma density or a smaller laser spot size is used, besides the donut-like wakefield, a central bell-like wakefield can also be excited. The wake sets in the center of the donut-like wake. In this case, both a central on-axis electron beam and a ring-shaped electron beam are simultaneously accelerated. Further, reducing the plasma density or laser spot size leads to an on-axis electron beam acceleration only. The research is beneficial for some potential applications requiring special pulse beam structures, such as positron acceleration and collimation

Interaction of Ultraintense Laser Vortices with Plasma Mirrors

“…In the last few years, there has been a growing interest for the use of such vortex laser beams to drive ultrahighintensity (UHI) laser-plasma interactions [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] up to the relativistic regime. These investigations are motivated by two main physical ideas.…”

“…These investigations are motivated by two main physical ideas. The first one is that the peculiar intensity profile of these beams provides new ways to control UHI interactions, e.g., leading to doughnut-shaped laser wakefields in underdense plasmas, suitable for efficient positron acceleration [8][9][10]. Secondly, the efficient transfer of OAM from optical vortices to plasmas could dramatically modify the physics of UHI interactions, thus leading to new effects of fundamental interest and new properties for the resulting light and particle beams [11][12][13][14].…”

Optimizing direct laser-driven electron acceleration and energy gain at ELI-NP

“…In recent years with the development of ultra-intense multi-PW laser technology, Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes have other potential applications in the fields of plasma accelerators, inertial confinement fusion and in the generation of X-rays and γ-rays with OAM [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. In particular, it has been shown that in laser wakefields driven by LG 01 helical pulses, the wakefield shows a donut-like structure with a ring-shaped hollow electron beam [14]. Furthermore, for a lower density plasma or a smaller laser spot size, besides the donut-like wakefield, a central bell-like wakefield forms in the center of the donut-like wake.…”

Single-Cycle Terawatt Twisted-Light Pulses at Midinfrared Wavelengths above 10 µ m

“…where 0 = 3 is the normalized laser amplitude (intensity ~10 19 is the beam radius, and 0 is the initial phase. Such laser pulses can be produced in several techniques [12,38,39], which have been extensively used to investigate relativistic laser-plasma interactions [40][41][42][43][44]. Fig.…”