Proposal for a pre-bunched laser wakefield acceleration experiment at the BNL DUV-fel facility

Abstract

We propose a pre-bunched Laser Wakefield Acceleration (LWFA) experiment in a plasma channel at the BNL DUV-FEL Facility. BNL DUV-FEL facility is uniquely qualified to carry out the proposed experiment because of the high-brightness electron beam and RF synchronized TW Ti:Sapphire laser system. The DUV- FEL is a 200 MeV linac facility equipped with a photocathode RF gun injector, a 100 fs Ti:Sapphire laser system and a magnetic bunch compressor. The proposed LWFA will inject a 150 MeV, 10 fs electron bunch into a centimeters long plasma channel. Simulation and preliminary experiment showed that, high-brightness 10 fs electron bunch with 20 pC charge could be produced using the technique of longitudinal emittance compensation. The initial experiment will be performed using the existing Ti:Sapphire laser system (50 mJ, 100 fs) with 30 /spl mu/mm spot and 4 cm channel, the maximum energy gain will be about 15 MeV. We propose to upgrade the existing SDL laser output to 500 mJ with a shorter pulse length (50 fs). For an electron beam spot size of 20 urn, the expected energy gain is about 100 MeV for a 5 TW, 50 fs laser pulse.