Abstract

Thanks to their compactness and unique properties, laser-wakefield accelerators are currently considered for several innovative applications. However, many of these applications---and especially those that require beam transport---are hindered by the large divergence of laser-accelerated beams. Here we propose a collimating concept that relies on the strong radial electric field of the laser-wakefield to reduce this divergence. This concept utilizes an additional gas jet, placed after the laser-wakefield accelerator. When the laser pulse propagates through this additional gas jet, it drives a wakefield which can refocus the trailing electron bunch. Particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that this approach can reduce the divergence by at least a factor of 3 for realistic electron bunches.

Highlights

  • Laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFA) can generate electron beams with hundreds of MeV over only a few millimeters [1,2,3]. They have been considered for many applications, including compact colliders [4], as well as compact synchrotron sources and free-electron lasers [5,6,7,8]

  • The feasibility of these two applications partly relies on the ability to focus the electron beam in the device

  • In the context of multi-stage LWFA, if the electron beam is not matched to the focusing fields in each stage, its emittance will quickly deteriorate [9]

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFA) can generate electron beams with hundreds of MeV over only a few millimeters [1,2,3]. When combining a LWFA and an undulator to produce synchrotron radiation, it is important to collimate the electron bunch in order to obtain an intense photon flux [5] This is even more crucial for a free-electron laser (FEL) [6], for which a low divergence and high charge density is critical to the FEL process itself. In this context, it was suggested that the bunch could be collimated by an adiabatic matching section, at the end of the accelerator [10,11]. We will concentrate here on the collimating case, but a refocusing configuration can be obtained by changing the lens parameters

SINGLE-PULSE LASER-PLASMA LENS
DOUBLE-PULSE LASER-PLASMA LENS
CONCLUSION
Observation of a spurious laser-induced transverse force
A hypothetical origin for the spurious force
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