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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that a ring-shaped hollow electron beam can be injected and accelerated by using a Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulse and ionization-induced injection in a laser wakefield accelerator. The acceleration and evolution of such a hollow, relativistic electron beam are investigated through three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. We find that both the ring size and the beam thickness oscillate during the acceleration. The beam azimuthal shape is angularly dependent and evolves during the acceleration. The beam ellipticity changes resulting from the electron angular momenta obtained from the drive laser pulse and the focusing forces from the wakefield. The dependence of beam ring radius on the laser-plasma parameters (e.g., laser intensity, focal size, and plasma density) is studied. Such a hollow electron beam may have potential applications for accelerating and collimating positively charged particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate high-flux dense positrons generation by irradiating an ultra-intense laser pulse onto a tapered hollow target. By using a laser with an intensity of 4 ×1023W/cm², it is shown that the Breit-Wheeler process dominates the positron production during the laser-target interaction and a positron beam with a total number >1015 is obtained, which is increased by five orders of magnitude than in the previous work at the same laser intensity. Due to the focusing effect of the transverse electric fields formed in the hollow cone wall, the divergence angle of the positron beam effectively decreases to ~15° with an effective temperature of ~674 MeV. When the laser intensity is doubled, both the positron flux (>1016) and temperature (963 MeV) increase, while the divergence angle gets smaller (~13°). The obtained high-flux low-divergence positron beam may have diverse applications in science, medicine, and engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A scheme for enhancing the electron injection charge in a laser-driven bubble acceleration is proposed. In this scheme, a thin foil target is placed in front of a gas target. Upon interaction with an ultra-intense laser pulse, the foil emits electrons with large longitudinal momenta, allowing them to be trapped into the transmitted shaped laser-excited bubble in the gaseous plasma target. Twodimensional particle-in-cell simulation is used to demonstrate this scheme, and an electron beam with a total electron number of 4.21 × 108 μm-1 can be produced, which is twice the number of electrons produced without the foil. Such scheme may be widely used for applications that require high electron yields such as positron and gamma ray generation from relativistic electron beams interacting with solid targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]