Abstract
We report on the stable and continuous operation of a kilohertz laser-plasma accelerator. Electron bunches with 2.6 pC charge and 2.5 MeV peak energy were generated via injection and trapping in a downward plasma density ramp. This density transition was produced in a newly designed asymmetrically shocked gas nozzle. The reproducibility of the electron source was also assessed over a period of a week and found to be satisfactory with similar values of the beam charge and energy. These results show that the reproducibility and stability of the laser-plasma accelerator are greatly enhanced on the long-term scale when using a robust scheme for density gradient injection.
Highlights
Laser-plasma wakefield acceleration [1] enables the generation and acceleration of electrons beams over very short distances due to their extreme longitudinal accelerating fields, orders of magnitude higher than in conventional accelerators
The electron spectrum was monitored during 5 hours of complete hands-off operation of the kilohertz laser-plasma accelerator, i.e., with no other intervention than the beam pointing stabilization feedback loops at the three above-mentioned locations in the laser chain, see Fig. 2
By using an asymmetrically shocked fusedsilica nozzle, we were able to produce the sharp density transition and the high plasma density necessary for downward density gradient injection in a laser-plasma accelerators (LPA) driven by few-cycle laser pulses
Summary
Laser-plasma wakefield acceleration [1] enables the generation and acceleration of electrons beams over very short distances due to their extreme longitudinal accelerating fields, orders of magnitude higher than in conventional accelerators. When driven by 100 TW to PW scale laser systems, laser-plasma accelerators (LPA) can produce electron beams in the 100 MeV-GeV energy range and are being considered as drivers for femtosecond x-ray beams, either via betatron radiation [2], Compton scattering [3,4], undulator radiation [5] or free electron laser radiation. Such femtosecond x-ray beams could enable time-resolved (pump-probe) experiments based on e.g., x-ray diffraction or spectroscopy. Such beams could be used for lowenergy applications such as ultrafast electron diffraction [10,11] or irradiation of biological samples [12,13]
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