Conceptual design of a laser wakefield acceleration experiment with external bunch injection

Abstract

We present a conceptual design of a laser wakefield acceleration experiment where a sub-picosecond electron bunch from a photo-cathode RF linac is injected into a plasma channel just before a laser pulse. The pulse overtakes the bunch which is then trapped, compressed and accelerated in the laser wakefield. This way ultra-relativistic bunches with a size of the order of a micron and relatively low energy spread can be generated. We show the results of our simulations and discuss the setup for a demonstration experiment.