Excitation and control of plasma wakefields by multiple laser pulses
Physical Review Letters American Physical Society 119:4 (2017) 044802
Abstract:
We demonstrate experimentally the resonant excitation of plasma waves by trains of laser pulses. We also take an important first step to achieving an energy recovery plasma accelerator by showing that a plasma wave can be damped by an out-of-resonance trailing laser pulse. The measured laser wakefields are found to be in excellent agreement with analytical and numerical models of wakefield excitation in the linear regime. Our results indicate a promising direction for achieving highly controlled, GeV-scale laser-plasma accelerators operating at multikilohertz repetition rates.Two-pulse ionization injection into quasilinear laser wakefields.
Physical review letters 111:15 (2013) 155004
Abstract:
We describe a scheme for controlling electron injection into the quasilinear wakefield driven by a guided drive pulse via ionization of a dopant species by a collinear injection laser pulse with a short Rayleigh range. The scheme is analyzed by particle-in-cell simulations which show controlled injection and acceleration of electrons to an energy of 370 MeV, a relative energy spread of 2%, and a normalized transverse emittance of 2.0 μm.Resonant excitation of plasma waves in a plasma channel
Physical Review Research American Physical Society 6:2 (2024) L022001
Abstract:
We demonstrate resonant excitation of a plasma wave by a train of short laser pulses guided in a preformed plasma channel, for parameters relevant to a plasma-modulated plasma accelerator (P-MoPA). We show experimentally that a train of N≈10 short pulses, of total energy ∼1J, can be guided through 110mm long plasma channels with on-axis densities in the range 1017-1018cm-3. The spectrum of the transmitted train is found to be strongly red shifted when the plasma period is tuned to the intratrain pulse spacing. Numerical simulations are found to be in excellent agreement with the measurements and indicate that the resonantly excited plasma waves have an amplitude in the range 3-10GVm-1, corresponding to an accelerator stage energy gain of order 1GeV.All-optical GeV electron bunch generation in a laser-plasma accelerator via truncated-channel injection.
Physical Review Letters American Physical Society 131:24 (2023) 245001
Abstract:
We describe a simple scheme, truncated-channel injection, to inject electrons directly into the wakefield driven by a high-intensity laser pulse guided in an all-optical plasma channel. We use this approach to generate dark-current-free 1.2 GeV, 4.5% relative energy spread electron bunches with 120 TW laser pulses guided in a 110 mm-long hydrodynamic optical-field-ionized plasma channel. Our experiments and particle-in-cell simulations show that high-quality electron bunches were only obtained when the drive pulse was closely aligned with the channel axis, and was focused close to the density down ramp formed at the channel entrance. Start-to-end simulations of the channel formation, and electron injection and acceleration show that increasing the channel length to 410 mm would yield 3.65 GeV bunches, with a slice energy spread ∼5×10^{-4}.EuPRAXIA conceptual design report
European Physical Journal - Special Topics Springer 229:24 (2020) 3675-4284