Mixed injection mechanism assisted cascaded laser wakefield accelerator

Abstract

Femtosecond electron bunches can be produced by laser plasma wakefield accelerators, with energy tunable from tens of MeV to a few GeV. In order to produce stable mono-energetic electron bunches, a critical issue is to control the injection of electron into the wakefield. The ionization injection is one of the most effective methods of controlling the injection, which is usually a continuous process. So, the electron bunches produced through ionization injection usually possess large energy spread. In order to optimize the ionization injection technique and produce stable monoenergetic wakefield electron beams, experimental studies are conducted on our 45 TW laser facility. In this work, a mixed injection mechanism assisted cascaded laser wakefield accelerator is presented. Based on a double-nozzle cascaded accelerator, the influences of ionization injection, shock wave front injection and their combination are experimentally studied. The results show that the lower threshold of the injection can be substantially reduced. The ionization injection is restricted within the shock wave front. As a result, mono-energetic electron bunches with reduced absolute energy spread can be stably produced. Under the most optimal conditions, the central energy and energy spread are (63.24 ± 6.12) MeV and (13.0 ± 3.9) MeV. The charge quantity of the electron bunches is (5.99 ± 3.10) pC. The minimum emitting anglular spread is (3.6 × 3.8) mrad.