Abstract
Laser-plasma technology promises a drastic reduction of the size of high-energy electron accelerators. It could make free-electron lasers available to a broad scientific community and push further the limits of electron accelerators for high-energy physics. Furthermore, the unique femtosecond nature of the source makes it a promising tool for the study of ultrafast phenomena. However, applications are hindered by the lack of suitable lens to transport this kind of high-current electron beams mainly due to their divergence. Here we show that this issue can be solved by using a laser-plasma lens in which the field gradients are five order of magnitude larger than in conventional optics. We demonstrate a reduction of the divergence by nearly a factor of three, which should allow for an efficient coupling of the beam with a conventional beam transport line.
Highlights
Laser-plasma technology promises a drastic reduction of the size of high-energy electron accelerators
An electron beam transport line based on quadrupole technology will degrade the quality of a laser-plasma electron beam, rendering it useless for most applications
It was proposed to focus an electron beam using the radial fields created in the wake of the electron beam itself, when it propagates in a plasma
Summary
Laser-plasma technology promises a drastic reduction of the size of high-energy electron accelerators. An electron beam transport line based on quadrupole technology will degrade the quality of a laser-plasma electron beam, rendering it useless for most applications As they can sustain much higher gradients, plasmas could help to drastically miniaturize focusing optics, similar to the miniaturization achieved by laser-plasma accelerators, and to avoid any emittance growth. For z44r0/y0, r is almost proportional to y0, the position is strongly correlated to the propagation angle Because of this correlation, electrons oscillate almost in phase in the second laser wakefield (the laser-plasma lens), except for a small detuning arising from the beam energy spread (which impacts the oscillation frequency) and from the dependance of r on r0. The electron beam will be collimated if the focusing fields vanish when the transverse momentum is minimum for most electrons
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