Hot electron generation from a hole target for external electron injection into a laser-based accelerator

M Fraenkel,G Oren,Z Henis,A Zigler,I Neuberger

doi:10.1063/1.5106410

Abstract

We are proposing hot electrons source, which are suitable for external injection into a wakefield accelerator. Hot electrons with energies up to 3 MeV were generated by the interaction of femtosecond laser at an intensity of I=3.5×1018 W/cm2 with the preplasma produced in 25 μm holes, drilled in 1 μm Au foils targets. The preplasma created by the 1 ns prepulse preceding the intense main laser pulse generates an elongated plasma under the critical density and scale length of tens of microns. This plasma channel enables generation of high energy and collimated electron beam. The proposed approach can allow minimizing current, laser based electron accelerators, to produce a new X –ray source, to generate relatively long, high density plasma source, which important for study of nonlinear effects related to Laser Fusion and other applications.

Highlights

Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) has been studied since it was proposed at 1979 by Tajima and Dawson.1 In this scheme, an electron beam injected into a plasma medium can be accelerated by the electric field created during the interaction of high intensity laser pulse with the plasma medium
The use of same laser pulse for both external electron production and LWFA at low plasma density was first suggested by Palchan et al in 2006.10 In that scheme the injection electrons were produced by the interaction of the laser pulse with a thin wire target mounted in front of capillary discharge device
The undisturbed part of the laser pulse would be used to produce the wakefield in the underdensed plasma in the capillary and accelerate the electron beam created by the wire target

Summary

Introduction

Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) has been studied since it was proposed at 1979 by Tajima and Dawson.1 In this scheme, an electron beam injected into a plasma medium can be accelerated by the electric field created during the interaction of high intensity laser pulse with the plasma medium. Hot electron generation from a hole target for external electron injection into a laser-based accelerator

Results

Conclusion