Generation of Good-Quality Relativistic Electron Beam From Self-Modulated Laser Wakefield Acceleration

Abstract

A relativistic electron bunch with a large charge (~2 nC ) was produced from a self-modulated laser wakefield acceleration configuration. In this experiment, an intense laser pulse with a peak power of 2 TW and a duration of 700 fs was focused in a nitrogen gas jet, and multi-MeV electrons were observed from the strong laser-plasma interaction. By passing the electrons through a small pinhole-like collimator of cone f/70, we observed a narrowing in the electron beam's energy spread. The beam clearly showed a small energy-spread behavior with a central energy of 4.8 MeV and a charge of 115 pC. The acceleration gradient was estimated to be about 20 GeV/m.

The ultrafast high-peak power lasers in future biomedical and medical x-ray imaging

“…The betatron emission has been predominantly studied and optimized with ultrashort laser pulses (< 100 fs). The development of new high average power laser technology with pulse durations in the 1-5 ps regime and experimental programs in High Energy Physics with high energy laser systems (TITAN, PETAL) with pulse durations in the 500 fs range are further motivating research aiming at optimization of generation of betatron radiation [113] through electron acceleration in regimes different from the LWFA including Self Modulated Laser Wakefield Acceleration (SMLWFA) [114][115][116][117] or the Direct Laser Acceleration (DLA) [113,[118][119][120].…”

Generation of electron beams from a laser wakefield acceleration in pure neon gas

“…Applications such as the x-ray generation through Compton scattering 13 or betatron oscillation 14 require electron beams with ever high charge and small divergence, which can be generated by using higher Z gases. A few experiments [15][16][17][18] have reported quasimonoenergetic electron beams with the energy of 7-50 MeV using pure nitrogen gas jet plasmas driven by 2-10 TW laser pulses. Recent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have predicted that quasimonoenergetic collimated GeV electrons can be generated by focusing chirped intense lasers pulse into pure nitrogen gas and using ionization injection.…”