1. All-optical GeV electron bunch generation in a laser-plasma accelerator via truncated-channel injection
- Author
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Picksley, A., Chappell, J., Archer, E., Bourgeois, N., Cowley, J., Emerson, D. R., Feder, L., Gu, X. J., Jakobsson, O., Ross, A. J., Wang, W., Walczak, R., and Hooker, S. M.
- Subjects
Physics - Accelerator Physics ,Physics - Plasma Physics - Abstract
We describe a simple scheme, truncated-channel injection, to inject electrons directly into the wakefield driven by a drive pulse guided by 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 (HOFI) 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 $\sim 5 \times 10^{-4}$.
- Published
- 2023
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