Abstract
Recently there has been great progress in laser-driven plasma-based accelerators by exploiting high-power lasers, where electron beams can be accelerated to multi-GeV energy in a centimeter-scale plasma due to the laser wakefield acceleration mechanism. While, to date, worldwide research on laser plasma accelerators has been focused on the creation of compact particle and radiation sources for basic sciences, medical and industrial applications, there is great interest in applications for high-energy physics and astrophysics, exploring unprecedented high-energy frontier phenomena. In this context, we present an overview of experimental achievements in laser plasma acceleration from the perspective of the production of GeV-level electron beams, and deduce the scaling formulas capable of predicting experimental results self-consistently, taking into account the propagation of a relativistic laser pulse through plasma and the accelerating field reduction due to beam loading. Finally, we present design examples for 10-GeV-level laser plasma acceleration, which is expected in near-term experiments by means of petawatt-class lasers.
Highlights
In this decade, active research has been carried out on the laser plasma acceleration concept[1] in order to achieve highenergy, high-quality electron beams with GeV energy in a cm-scale plasma[2,3,4,5,6], 1%-level energy spread[7], 1-mmmrad-level transverse emittance[8] and 1-fs-level bunch duration[9], ensuring that the stability of reproduction is as high as that of present high-power ultrashort-pulse lasers[10]
Once the plasma electrons expelled by the ponderomotive force of the laser pulse form a plasma cavity called a ‘bubble’, some of them are self-injected into the wakefield by a wavebreaking or restoring force exerted by an ion channel remaining unshielded behind the laser pulse
We have provided an overview of recent progress in laser plasma accelerators from the perspective of experiments on the production of GeV-level electron beams, and scaling formulas to describe energy gain for a self-guided laser plasma accelerator in the bubble regime (a0 2), a channel-guided laser plasma accelerator in the bubble regime (a0 2) and a channel-guided laser plasma accelerator in the quasi-linear regime (a0 < 2)
Summary
Active research has been carried out on the laser plasma acceleration concept[1] in order to achieve highenergy, high-quality electron beams with GeV energy in a cm-scale plasma[2,3,4,5,6], 1%-level energy spread[7], 1-mmmrad-level transverse emittance[8] and 1-fs-level bunch duration[9], ensuring that the stability of reproduction is as high as that of present high-power ultrashort-pulse lasers[10]. Based on recent results on laser plasma acceleration experiments and large-scale particlein-cell (PIC) simulations[16,17,18], design consideration and feasibility studies on applications for high-energy frontier colliders with TeV-range center-of-mass energy have been carried out[19, 20]. In this context, state-of-the-art PW-class lasers allow us to study the feasibility of laser plasma accelerators toward the 10–100-GeV range in a full-scale experiment.
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