Abstract
Laser plasma based accelerators have the potential to reduce dramatically the size and cost of future particle colliders and light sources. Production of high quality beams along with reproducibility, tunability, and efficiency are required for many applications. We present design principles for two-pulse colliding laser pulse injection mechanisms, which can meet these requirements. Simulations are used to determine the best conditions for the production of high quality beams: high charge, low energy spread, and low emittance. Simulations also allow access to the internal dynamics of the interaction, providing insight regarding further improvement of the beam quality. We find that a 20 pC beam can be accelerated to 300 MeV in 4 mm with only a few percent energy spread and transverse normalized emittance close to 1 mm mrad, using a 10 TW laser. We demonstrate that this design scales according to linear theory. Control of the laser pulse mode content and subsequent evolution in the plasma channel are shown to be critical for achieving the highest beam quality.
Highlights
Laser plasma based accelerators (LPAs) are able to sustain accelerating gradient 3 orders of magnitude higher than conventional accelerators, making them attractive for the generation of particle accelerators [1]
Production of high quality electron beams in LPA was first demonstrated at the 100 MeV level [2,3,4] using 10 TW class lasers, and later on at the 0.5–1 GeV level [5], where longer interaction distance and higher laser power (∼40 TW) were used
VI we evaluate the effects of higher order mode components in the laser driver on the final beam quality
Summary
Laser plasma based accelerators (LPAs) are able to sustain accelerating gradient 3 orders of magnitude higher than conventional accelerators, making them attractive for the generation of particle accelerators [1]. High quality accelerators, further self-consistent simulations are needed to understand colliding pulse injectors with plasma channel guiding and the importance of laser evolution, tuning of the injector to increase beam performance per laser joule, the scaling of the mechanism to produce desired beam energy and charge, and the impact of non-Gaussian laser modes typical of experiments. These simulations show that the colliding pulse injection scheme can use more efficiently the laser energy as it does not require prior propagation of the laser into the plasma to induce trapping, and electron beams close to 0.5 GeV can be produced using the 10 TW laser system This makes it more affordable to produce beams relevant to light source applications, including gamma-ray sources using Compton scattering [31]. VI we evaluate the effects of higher order mode components in the laser driver on the final beam quality
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
