Publisher’s Note: Near-GeV Acceleration of Electrons by a Nonlinear Plasma Wave Driven by a Self-Guided Laser Pulse [Phys. Rev. Lett.103, 035002 (2009)]

Abstract

The acceleration of electrons to '0:8 GeV has been observed in a self-injecting laser wakefield accelerator driven at a plasma density of 5:5 Â 10 18 cm À3 by a 10 J, 55 fs, 800 nm laser pulse in the blowout regime. The laser pulse is found to be self-guided for 1 cm (>10z R), by measurement of a single filament containing >30% of the initial laser energy at this distance. Three-dimensional particle in cell simulations show that the intensity within the guided filament is amplified beyond its initial focused value to a normalized vector potential of a 0 > 6, thus driving a highly nonlinear plasma wave.

Polarized beam conditioning in plasma based acceleration

“…Analytical results for the beam polarization can be retrieved in the limit È ( 1, combining Eqs. (9), (15), and (17)-(19), yielding…”

“…The most important advances using laser pulse drivers [laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA)], also occurred in the blowout regime, and demonstrated the acceleration of 1 GeV electron beams in cm-scale plasmas [11][12][13][14][15]. Several techniques were also devised in order to control the acceleration processes [16], adjusting the bunch energy, charge [17][18][19][20], and transverse features [21].…”

Physics of Phase Space Matching for Staging Plasma and Traditional Accelerator Components Using Longitudinally Tailored Plasma Profiles

“…These machines are getting too large and expensive, giving impetus to research on advanced particle acceleration schemes that may lead to a more compact and efficient alternatives to the present technology [4]. One such approach, plasma-based acceleration, has been intensely studied and has made significant recent progress towards both high-gradient and high-efficiency acceleration [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. However another important challenge in the development of plasma-based accelerators (PBAs) that has only recently been discussed [13][14][15][16] and hitherto little explored [17,18] is to match the beam out of the plasma into another accelerator component without spoiling the beam's emittance.…”

Inner-shell photo-ionisation x-ray lasing

“…Monte-Carlo 2D simulations have been performed to evaluate the tron radiation produced by more energetic electron beams as those recently demonstrated on a 200TW-class laser [7] or as given by scaling laws [8]. Four cases have been investigated: (a) P las = 200 TW, E e max = 400 MeV, Q = 350 pC (b) P las = 200 TW, E e max = 800 MeV, Q = 550 pC, (c) P las = 2 PW, E e max = 9 GeV, Q = 1.8 nC and (d) P las = 10 PW, E e max = 15 GeV, Q = 4 nC (Q being the electron beam charge and E e max the maximum energy reached by the accelerated electrons).…”