Generating High-Brightness Electron Beams via Ionization Injection by Transverse Colliding Lasers in a Plasma-Wakefield Accelerator

Li, F.; Hua, Jianfei; Xu, Xinlu; Zhang, C. J.; Liu, Yan; Du, Yingchao; Huang, Wenhui; Chen, H. B.; Tang, Chuanxiang; Lü, Wei; Joshi, C.; Mori, W. B.; Gu, Yuqiu

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.111.015003

Cited by 92 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…This strategy has been demonstrated recently in two schemes utilizing an electron beam driver to excite the wake [16,17]. Due to the much lower electric field of the electron beam driver, ionization of low IP atoms (e.g., H or Li) are used to excite the wake while the modest IP helium atoms can be used to provide the injected electrons, which requires a much lower laser intensity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low emittance electron beam generation from a laser wakefield accelerator using two laser pulses with different wavelengths

Zhang

et al. 2014

Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams

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Ionization injection triggered by short wavelength laser pulses inside a nonlinear wakefield driven by a longer wavelength laser is examined via multidimensional particle-in-cell simulations. We find that very bright electron beams can be generated through this two-color scheme in either collinear propagating or transverse colliding geometry. For a fixed laser intensity I, lasers with longer/shorter wavelength λ have larger/smaller ponderomotive potential (∝ Iλ 2 ). The two-color scheme utilizes this property to separate the injection process from the wakefield excitation process. Very strong wakes can be generated at relatively low laser intensities by using a longer wavelength laser driver (e.g., a 10 μm CO 2 laser) due to its very large ponderomotive potential. On the other hand, a short wavelength laser can produce electrons with very small residual momenta (p ⊥ ∼ a 0 ∼ ffiffi I p λ) inside the wake, leading to electron beams with very small normalized emittances (tens of nm). Using particle-in-cell simulations we show that a ∼10 fs electron beam with ∼4 pC of charge and a normalized emittance of ∼50 nm can be generated by combining a 10 μm driving laser with a 400 nm injection laser, which is an improvement of more than 1 order of magnitude compared to the typical results obtained when a single wavelength laser is used for both the wake formation and ionization injection. With the transverse colliding geometry, simulations show that similarly low emittance and much lower slice energy spread (∼30 keV, comparing with the typical value of few MeV in the longitudinal injection scheme) can be simultaneously obtained for electron beams with a few pC charge. Such low slice energy spread may have significant advantages in applications relevant to future coherent light sources driven by plasma accelerators.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low emittance electron beam generation from a laser wakefield accelerator using two laser pulses with different wavelengths

Zhang

et al. 2014

Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams

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“…Besides the demands for high beam energies, these applications entail stringent requirements with regard to the beam quality. While a number of numerical studies [6][7][8][9][10][11] indicated the potential of PWFAs to generate high quality beams, one of the major challenges constitutes the preservation of these qualities during the witness beam extraction and transport to the interaction region. In addition, the beams may have to be transported in between successive plasma sections and re-injected without significant quality deterioration in staged acceleration concepts, such as proposed e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient numerical modelling of the emittance evolution of beams with finite energy spread in plasma wakefield accelerators

Mehrling

Robson

Erbe

et al. 2016

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A:

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a b s t r a c tThis paper introduces a semi-analytic numerical approach (SANA) for the rapid computation of the transverse emittance of beams with finite energy spread in plasma wakefield accelerators in the blowout regime. The SANA method is used to model the beam emittance evolution when injected into and extracted from realistic plasma profiles. Results are compared to particle-in-cell simulations, establishing the accuracy and efficiency of the procedure. In addition, it is demonstrated that the tapering of vacuumto-plasma and plasma-to-vacuum transitions is a viable method for the mitigation of emittance growth of beams during their injection and extraction from and into plasma cells.

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“…In one, electrons are born inside the wake through field ionization where the wake potential is near a maximum which eases the trapping threshold [12][13][14]. There are now numerous variations of this idea in which the injection and wake excitation are separated [15][16][17]. In the second, one or more laser pulses are used to trigger injection inside one plasma wake bucket [18][19][20][21].…”

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High quality electron bunch generation using a longitudinal density-tailored plasma-based accelerator in the three-dimensional blowout regime

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. Accel. Beams

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The generation of very high quality electron bunches (high brightness and low energy spread) from a plasma-based accelerator in the three-dimensional blowout regime using self-injection in tailored plasma density profiles is analyzed theoretically and with particle-in-cell simulations. The underlying physical mechanism that leads to the generation of high quality electrons is uncovered by tracking the trajectories of the electrons in the sheath that are trapped by the wake. Details on how the intensity of the driver and the density scale-length of the plasma control the ultimate beam quality are described. Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations indicate that this concept has the potential to produce beams with peak brightnesses between 10 20 and 10 21 A=m 2 =rad 2 and with absolute slice energy spreads of ∼Oð0.1Þ MeV using existing lasers or electron beams to drive nonlinear wakefields. We also show projected energy spreads as low as ∼0.3 MeV for half the charge can be generated at an optimized acceleration distance. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.20.111303 Research in plasma-based acceleration (PBA) driven by a laser pulse or a relativistic electron beam is very active [1] because the large accelerating gradients in plasma wave wakefields may lead to compact accelerators. PBA is also capable of self-generating electron bunches that have significant charge (Q), short duration (τ) and low normalized emittance (ϵ n ). A combination of these quantities define the normalized beam brightness B n ¼ 2I=ϵ 2 n where I ¼ Q=τ is the current. While PBA experiments have produced useful beams, they have not produced beams with the necessary brightness and energy spread needed to drive an x-ray free-electron-laser (X-FEL) [2] or the charge and emittance needed as an injector for a future linear collider [3].The electron bunches needed to load plasma wakefields are very short and need to be synchronized with the driver. Therefore, self-injection has been actively investigated. The threshold for self-injection of electrons into nonlinear three-dimensional (3D) plasma waves in uniform plasmas has been studied in simulations and experiments [4][5][6][7][8]. Even in simulations, this process does not appear to be capable of generating the high quality beams needed for X-FELs or a linear collider [9][10][11]. Therefore there has been much recent work on methods for generating high brightness beams through controlled injection. These ideas fall into three categories. In one, electrons are born inside the wake through field ionization where the wake potential is near a maximum which eases the trapping threshold [12][13][14]. There are now numerous variations of this idea in which the injection and wake excitation are separated [15][16][17]. In the second, one or more laser pulses are used to trigger injection inside one plasma wake bucket [18][19][20][21]. In the third, which we consider here, the effective phase velocity of the wake is slowed down either by a density transition from high to low density [22,23], or through ...

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Generating High-Brightness Electron Beams via Ionization Injection by Transverse Colliding Lasers in a Plasma-Wakefield Accelerator

Cited by 92 publications

References 27 publications

Low emittance electron beam generation from a laser wakefield accelerator using two laser pulses with different wavelengths

Low emittance electron beam generation from a laser wakefield accelerator using two laser pulses with different wavelengths

Efficient numerical modelling of the emittance evolution of beams with finite energy spread in plasma wakefield accelerators

High quality electron bunch generation using a longitudinal density-tailored plasma-based accelerator in the three-dimensional blowout regime

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