Abstract
The quality of laser wakefield accelerated electrons beams is strongly determined by the physical mechanism exploited to inject electrons in the wakefield. One of the techniques used to improve the beam quality is the density transition injection, where the electron trapping occurs as the laser pulse passes a sharp density transition created in the plasma. Although this technique has been widely demonstrated experimentally, the literature lacks theoretical and numerical studies on the effects of all the transition parameters. We thus report and discuss the results of a series of particle in cell (PIC) simulations where the density transition height and downramp length are systematically varied, to show how the electron beam parameters and the injection mechanism are affected by the density transition parameters.
Highlights
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) [1,2,3] of electron beams is one of the most promising physical mechanisms to overcome the accelerating gradient limitations of conventional accelerators
Limits and scaling laws of the density transition injection scheme, we present in this work the results of a series of simulations where the density transition characteristics are systematically changed and discuss how they influence the injected electron beam quality
To investigate the dependence on the density transition characteristics of the electron beams obtained through density transition injection, a parametric scan was performed with the particle in cell (PIC) code CALDER-CIRC [29]
Summary
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) [1,2,3] of electron beams is one of the most promising physical mechanisms to overcome the accelerating gradient limitations of conventional accelerators. Thaury et al [28] report electron beams of charge 1 pC produced through this technique, accelerated to energies about 100 MeV, with lowest energy spread 10 MeV on 10 consecutive shots; those beams were obtained with plasma density 3 · 1018 cm−3 at the density profile center, laser pulse with peak intensity in vacuum 5 · 1018 W/cm, pulse length and transverse size near to those used for the simulations in this work. Limits and scaling laws of the density transition injection scheme, we present in this work the results of a series of simulations where the density transition characteristics are systematically changed and discuss how they influence the injected electron beam quality. In the fourth section additional considerations on the distribution in the transition downramp of the injected electrons are reported
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