Laser-Plasma - Accelerator-Driven Quasi - Monoenergetic MeV Thomson Photon Source and Laser Facility

Abstract

In this report, we demonstrate precise control of a laser plasma accelerator (LPA) through characterization of a shock-induced density downramp injector. Experiments systematically varied the shock injector profile, including shock angle, shock position, up-ramp width, and acceleration length. As a result, an electron beam that was highly tunable from 30 to 300 MeV with 8.5% energy spread, 1.5 mrad divergence and 0.35 mrad pointing fluctuation was produced. We also report the progress of a project focusing on demonstrating the crucial enablers of a compact LPA based MeV Thomson photon source in an integrated experiment and a dedicated 100 TW laser facility built at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).