High quality electron beam acceleration by ionization injection in laser wakefields with mid-infrared dual-color lasers

Abstract

For the laser wakefield acceleration, suppression of beam energy spread while keeping sufficient charge is one of the key challenges. In order to achieve this, we propose bichromatic laser ionization injection with combined laser wavelengths of 2.4 μm and 0.8 μm for wakefield excitation and triggering electron injection via field ionization, respectively. A laser pulse at 2.4 μm wavelength enables one to drive an intense acceleration structure with a relatively low laser power. To further reduce the requirement of laser power, we also propose to use carbon dioxide as the working gas medium, where carbon acts as the injection element. Our three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that electron beams at the GeV energy level with both low energy spreads (around 1%) and high charges (several tens of picocoulomb) can be obtained by the use of this scheme with laser peak power totaling sub-100 TW.