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With the advancement of high-power UV laser technology, the use of nanostructures for particle acceleration attracts renewed interest due to its possibility of achieving TV/m accelerating gradients in solid state plasmas. Electron acceleration in ionized materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene is currently considered as a potential alternative to the usual laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) schemes. An evaluation of the suitability of a graphene target for LWFA can be carried out using an effective density model, thus replacing the need to model each layer. We present a 2D evaluation of the longitudinal electric field driven by a short UV laser pulse in a multi-layer graphene structure, showing that longitudinal fields of ~5 TV/m are achievable., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

This work presents a study on laser wakefield electron acceleration in the self-modulated regime (SM-LWFA) using 50-fs laser pulses with energy on the mJ scale, at λ = 0.8 µm, impinging on a thin H2 gas jet. Particle-in-cell simulations were performed using laser peak powers ranging from sub-terawatt to a few terawatts and plasma densities varying from the relativistic self-focusing threshold up to values close to the critical density. The differences in the obtained acceleration processes are discussed. Results show that bunched electron beams with full charge on the nC scale and kinetic energy in the MeV range can be produced and configurations with peak density in the range 0.5–5 × 1020 atoms/cm3 generate electrons with maximum energies. In this range, some simulations generated quasimonoenergetic bunches with ∼0.5% of the total accelerated charge and we show that the beam characteristics, process dynamics, and operational parameters are close to those expected for the blowout regime. The configurations that led to quasimonoenergetic bunches from the sub-TW SM-LWFA regime allow the use of laser systems with repetition rates in the kHz range, which can be beneficial for practical applications.

The active plasma beam dump utilizes a laser to generate a plasma wakefield and decelerate an externally injected beam to low energy. We use the particle-in-cell code "Smi-lei" for the investigation of electron beam energy loss in plasma. In this research work, we optimize the laser and plasma parameters to investigate the active plasma beam dump scheme. In doing so, most of the beam energy will be deposited in the plasma. The optimization strategy for the beam energy loss in plasma is presented., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil

In order to make a full use of the whole proton bunch to drive large amplitude plasma wakefields and suppress the uncontrolled growth of any possible instabilities at the head of the proton bunch, the AWAKE Run 2 experiment plans to use an electron bunch to seed the formation of the proton bunch self-modulation. Additionally, a density step in the plasma channel will be used to freeze the selfmodulation process to keep the wakefield amplitude. In this work, numerical simulations performed with FBPIC are used to investigate the electron seeded proton self-modulation and the effect of the plasma density step as well., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil