Beam Energy Spread Research Articles

High quality electron beam acceleration by ionization injection in laser wakefields with mid-infrared dual-color lasers

For the laser wakefield acceleration, suppression of beam energy spread while keeping sufficient charge is one of the key challenges. In order to achieve this, we propose bichromatic laser ionization injection with combined laser wavelengths of 2.4 μm and 0.8 μm for wakefield excitation and triggering electron injection via field ionization, respectively. A laser pulse at 2.4 μm wavelength enables one to drive an intense acceleration structure with a relatively low laser power. To further reduce the requirement of laser power, we also propose to use carbon dioxide as the working gas medium, where carbon acts as the injection element. Our three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that electron beams at the GeV energy level with both low energy spreads (around 1%) and high charges (several tens of picocoulomb) can be obtained by the use of this scheme with laser peak power totaling sub-100 TW.

Benchmark Quantum Mechanical Calculations of Vibrationally Resolved Cross Sections and Rate Constants on ab Initio Potential Energy Surfaces for the F + HD Reaction: Comparisons with Experiments.

Quantum scattering calculations within the time-independent approach in an extended interval of energies were performed for the title reaction on four ab initio potential energy surfaces. The calculated integral cross sections, vibrational branching ratios, and rate constants are compared with scattering experiments as well as with chemical kinetics rate data available for this system for both the HF and DF channels. The calculations on the CSZ (J. Chem. Phys. 2015, 142, 024303) and LWAL (J. Chem. Phys. 2007, 127, 174302) surfaces are in close agreement between them and reproduce satisfactorily the experimental measurements. The agreement with the experiments is improved with respect to calculations on the earlier SW (J. Chem. Phys. 1996, 104, 6515) and FXZ (J. Chem. Phys. 2008, 129, 011103) surfaces. The results presented here witness the remarkable progress made by quantum chemistry calculations in describing the interatomic interactions governing the dynamics and kinetics of this reaction. They also suggest that comparison with translationally and rotationally averaged experimental observables is not sufficient to assess the relative accuracy of highly accurate potential energy surfaces. The dynamics and kinetics calculations show that temperatures lower than 50 K or molecular beam energy spread below 1 meV must be reached to discriminate the accuracy of the LWAL and the CSZ surfaces.

Energy spread minimization in a cascaded laser wakefield accelerator via velocity bunching

We propose a scheme to minimize the energy spread of an electron beam (e-beam) in a cascaded laser wakefield accelerator to the one-thousandth-level by inserting a stage to compress its longitudinal spatial distribution. In this scheme, three-segment plasma stages are designed for electron injection, e-beam length compression, and e-beam acceleration, respectively. The trapped e-beam in the injection stage is transferred to the zero-phase region at the center of one wakefield period in the compression stage where the length of the e-beam can be greatly shortened owing to the velocity bunching. After being seeded into the third stage for acceleration, the e-beam can be accelerated to a much higher energy before its energy chirp is compensated owing to the shortened e-beam length. A one-dimensional theory and two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations have demonstrated this scheme and an e-beam with 0.2% rms energy spread and low transverse emittance could be generated without loss of charge.

Combining harmonic generation and laser chirping to achieve high spectral density in Compton sources

Recently various laser-chirping schemes have been investigated with the goal of reducing or eliminating ponderomotive line broadening in Compton or Thomson scattering occurring at high laser intensities. As a next level of detail in the spectrum calculations, we have calculated the line smoothing and broadening expected due to incident beam energy spread within a one-dimensional plane wave model for the incident laser pulse, both for compensated (chirped) and unchirped cases. The scattered compensated distributions are treatable analytically within three models for the envelope of the incident laser pulses: Gaussian, Lorentzian, or hyperbolic secant. We use the new results to demonstrate that the laser chirping in Compton sources at high laser intensities: (i) enables the use of higher order harmonics, thereby reducing the required electron beam energies; and (ii) increases the photon yield in a small frequency band beyond that possible with the fundamental without chirping. This combination of chirping and higher harmonics can lead to substantial savings in the design, construction and operational costs of the new Compton sources. This is of particular importance to the the widely popular laser-plasma accelerator based Compton sources, as the improvement in their beam quality enters the regime where chirping is most effective.

Characterization of a 5 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5 \times 5$</tex-math> </inline-formula> LYSO Matrix Calorimeter Prototype

In this paper, we present measurements of the energy and the time resolution of the Lutetium–Yttrium Oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) calorimeter prototype for the Mu2e experiment. The prototype calorimeter matrix consisted of 25, $\hbox{3}\,\hbox{$\times$}\, \hbox{3}\,\hbox{$\times$}\, \hbox{130 mm}^3$ , LYSO crystals readout by $10 \times 10 \hbox{mm}^2$ Hamamatsu APDs. The prototype has been tested both with the tagged photon beam at MAMI, Mainz, Germany, and with the ${e^ -}$ beam of BTF, Frascati. The energy of particles used ranges between 61.3 and 187.1 MeV (80–130 MeV) for photon (electron) beams. While the MAMI data shows a negligible beam energy spread, we observe a 3%–5% contribution related to the beam in BTF sample. After correcting this effect, we obtain a global energy dependence of the energy resolution described by the formula ${\sigma _{E}}/{{E}_{{\rm {dep}}}}= {a}/\sqrt {{{E}_{{\rm {dep}}}}/{\hbox{GeV}}} \oplus {b}$ , with ${a} = ({0.59} \pm {0.12})\%$ and ${b} = ({3.63} \pm {0.21})\% $ . The simulation is in good agreement with data if we add an additional contribution due to the intrinsic LYSO fluctuation of 2.6%. We present also the measurements of the time resolution. The measurements have been performed using the ${e^ -}$ beam BTF in the energy range from 100 to 400 MeV. A resolution of ( ${161} \pm {3}$ ) ps at 100 MeV has been achieved. The energy dependence of the resolution has been fitted with following parametrization: ${\sigma _{\rm t}}{\rm (E)} = {a}/\sqrt {{E}/{\hbox{GeV}}} \oplus {b}$ , where the stochastic term and the constant term are determined to be ${a} = ({50} \pm {1})$ ps and ${b} = ({40} \pm {3})$ ps, respectively.

Monte Carlo ray-tracing simulations for cold neutron beam guides of CONAS

The cold neutron guides dedicated to the cold neutron activation station (CONAS) at HANARO (KAERI, Republic of Korea) offering a substantial improvement of analytical sensitivity were simulated by using two Monte Carlo neutron ray-tracing packages (McStas and VITESS). In this paper, the estimations of neutron intensities and fluxes were calculated at some particular positions of the two cold neutron guides, namely CG1 and CG2B. In addition, some drawbacks of the simulation with the energy spread of the incident beams were found out based on the comparison between the simulation and experimental results.

Using Target Ablation for Ion Beam Quality Improvement**Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant No 2013CBA01502, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11025523 and J1103206, and the National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Projects under Grant No 2012YQ030142.

During the laser foil interaction, the output ion beam quality including the energy spread and beam divergence can be improved by the target ablation, due to the direct laser acceleration (DLA) electrons generated in the ablation plasma. The acceleration field established at the target rear by these electrons, which is highly directional and triangle-envelope, is helpful for the beam quality. With the help of the target ablation, both the beam divergence and energy spread will be reduced. If the ablation is more sufficient, the impact of DLA-electron-caused field will be strengthened, and the beam quality will be better, confirmed by the particle-in-cell simulation.

Transport studies of LPA electron beam towards the FEL amplification at COXINEL

Laser Plasma Acceleration (LPA) [1] is an emerging concept enabling to generate electron beams with high energy, high peak current and small transverse emittance within a very short distance. The use of LPA can be applied to the Free Electron Laser (FEL) [2] case in order to investigate whether it is suitable for the light amplification in the undulator. However, capturing and guiding of such beams to the undulator is very challenging, because of the large divergence and high energy spread of the electron beams at the plasma exit, leading to large chromatic emittances.A specific beam manipulation scheme was recently proposed for the COXINEL (Coherent X-ray source inferred from electrons accelerated by laser) setup, which makes an advantage from the intrinsically large chromatic emittance of such beams [3]. The electron beam transport is studied using two simulation codes: a SOLEIL in-house one and ASTRA [4]. The influence of the collective effects on the electron beam performance is also examined.

3D electromagnetic simulation of spatial autoresonance acceleration of electron beams

The results of full electromagnetic simulations of the electron beam acceleration by a TE112 linear polarized electromagnetic field through Space Autoresonance Acceleration mechanism are presented. In the simulations, both the self-sustaned electric field and selfsustained magnetic field produced by the beam electrons are included into the elaborated 3D Particle in Cell code. In this system, the space profile of the magnetostatic field maintains the electron beams in the acceleration regime along their trajectories. The beam current density evolution is calculated applying the charge conservation method. The full magnetic field in the superparticle positions is found by employing the trilinear interpolation of the mesh node data. The relativistic Newton-Lorentz equation presented in the centered finite difference form is solved using the Boris algorithm that provides visualization of the beam electrons pathway and energy evolution. A comparison between the data obtained from the full electromagnetic simulations and the results derived from the motion equation depicted in an electrostatic approximation is carried out. It is found that the self-sustained magnetic field is a factor which improves the resonance phase conditions and reduces the beam energy spread.

Emittance preservation during bunch compression with a magnetized beam

The deleterious effects of coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) on the phase-space and energy spread of high-energy beams in accelerator light sources can significantly constrain the machine design and performance. In this paper, we present a simple method to preserve the beam emittance by means of using magnetized beams that exhibit a large aspect ratio on their transverse dimensions. The concept is based in combining a finite solenoid field where the beam is generated with a special optics adapter. Numerical simulations of this new type of beam source show that the induced phase-space density growth from CSR can be notably suppressed to less than 1% for any bunch charge. This work elucidates the key parameters that are needed for emittance preservation, such as the required field and aspect ratio for a given bunch charge.

MTCA.4-Based Digital LLRF Control System for CW SRF Linacs

Stable and reproducible generation of a photon beam at Free Electron Lasers (FELs) necessitates a low energy spread of the electron beam. This spread is disturbed by various factors. A low level radio frequency (LLRF) control system stabilizes the RF field inside accelerating modules, as amplitude and phase fluctuations are the main bunch-to-bunch energy spread sources. This paper describes the architecture of the LLRF control system based on the Micro-Telecommunications Computing Architecture (MTCA.4) platform developed by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG). This architecture offers manageability, reliability, and scalability which are crucial for high energy physics experiments. The hardware modules such as digitizers, down-converters (DWC), or vector modulators (VM) have been adopted from multi-channel, vector sum based systems and optimized. The field detection scheme utilizes the analog frequency shifting to an intermediate frequency (IF). Analog-to-digital conversion and digital complex frequency down-conversion are applied. The firmware has been optimized for minimal latency. The software communicates with the firmware using a PCIe bus, reads waveforms for diagnostic purposes, and abstracts hardware and firmware settings for the paneling system. Distinctive characteristics of the CW mode of operation affecting the LLRF system are discussed. The system design process and the important parameter value selection criteria are presented. The noise contribution of hardware subcomponents and other limitations of the field detection are analyzed. The digital signal processing path is split into atomic operations and examined. Interfacing with other systems is discussed. Proposals for future developments are given.

Wakefield-induced ionization injection in beam-driven plasma accelerators

We present a detailed analysis of the features and capabilities of Wakefield-Induced Ionization (WII) injection in the blowout regime of beam driven plasma accelerators. This mechanism exploits the electric wakefields to ionize electrons from a dopant gas and trap them in a well-defined region of the accelerating and focusing wake phase, leading to the formation of high-quality witness-bunches [Martinez de la Ossa et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 245003 (2013)]. The electron-beam drivers must feature high-peak currents (Ib0≳8.5 kA) and a duration comparable to the plasma wavelength to excite plasma waves in the blowout regime and enable WII injection. In this regime, the disparity of the magnitude of the electric field in the driver region and the electric field in the rear of the ion cavity allows for the selective ionization and subsequent trapping from a narrow phase interval. The witness bunches generated in this manner feature a short duration and small values of the normalized transverse emittance (kpσz∼kpϵn∼0.1). In addition, we show that the amount of injected charge can be adjusted by tuning the concentration of the dopant gas species, which allows for controlled beam loading and leads to a reduction of the total energy spread of the witness beams. Electron bunches, produced in this way, fulfil the requirements to drive blowout regime plasma wakes at a higher density and to trigger WII injection in a second stage. This suggests a promising new concept of self-similar staging of WII injection in steps with increasing plasma density, giving rise to the potential of producing electron beams with unprecedented energy and brilliance from plasma-wakefield accelerators.

Spectral Modification of Shock Accelerated Ions Using a Hydrodynamically Shaped Gas Target.

We report on reproducible shock acceleration from irradiation of a λ=10 μm CO_{2} laser on optically shaped H_{2} and He gas targets. A low energy laser prepulse (I≲10^{14} W cm^{-2}) is used to drive a blast wave inside the gas target, creating a steepened, variable density gradient. This is followed, after 25 ns, by a high intensity laser pulse (I>10^{16} W cm^{-2}) that produces an electrostatic collisionless shock. Upstream ions are accelerated for a narrow range of prepulse energies. For long density gradients (≳40 μm), broadband beams of He^{+} and H^{+} are routinely produced, while for shorter gradients (≲20 μm), quasimonoenergetic acceleration of protons is observed. These measurements indicate that the properties of the accelerating shock and the resultant ion energy distribution, in particular the production of narrow energy spread beams, is highly dependent on the plasma density profile. These findings are corroborated by 2D particle-in-cell simulations.

Multiple quasi-monoenergetic electron beams from laser-wakefield acceleration with spatially structured laser pulse

By adjusting the focus geometry of a spatially structured laser pulse, single, double, and treble quasi-monoenergetic electron beams were generated, respectively, in laser-wakefield acceleration. Single electron beam was produced as focusing the laser pulse to a single spot. While focusing the laser pulse to two spots that are approximately equal in energy and size and intense enough to form their own filaments, two electron beams were produced. Moreover, with a proper distance between those two focal spots, three electron beams emerged with a certain probability owing to the superposition of the diffractions of those two spots. The energy spectra of the multiple electron beams are quasi-monoenergetic, which are different from that of the large energy spread beams produced due to the longitudinal multiple-injection in the single bubble.

Production of pure quasi-monochromatic 11C beams for accurate radiation therapy and dose delivery verification

In the present study we develop a new technique for the production of clean quasi-monochromatic 11C positron emitter beams for accurate radiation therapy and PET–CT dose delivery imaging and treatment verification. The 11C ion beam is produced by projectile fragmentation using a primary 12C ion beam. The practical elimination of the energy spread of the secondary 11C fragments and other beam contaminating fragments is described. Monte Carlo calculation with the SHIELD-HIT10+ code and analytical methods for the transport of the ions in matter are used in the analysis. Production yields, as well as energy, velocity and magnetic rigidity distributions of the fragments generated in a cylindrical target are scored as a function of the depth within 1cm thick slices for an optimal target consisting of a fixed 20cm section of liquid hydrogen followed by a variable thickness section of polyethylene. The wide energy and magnetic rigidity spread of the 11C ion beam can be reduced to values around 1% by using a variable monochromatizing wedge-shaped degrader in the beam line. Finally, magnetic rigidity and particle species selection, as well as discrimination of the particle velocity through a combined Time of Flight and Radio Frequency-driven Velocity filter purify the beam from similar magnetic rigidity contaminating fragments (mainly 7Be and 3He fragments). A beam purity of about 99% is expected by the combined method.

Beam energy distribution influences on density modulation efficiency in seeded free-electron lasers

The beam energy spread at the entrance of an undulator system is of paramount importance for efficient density modulation in high-gain seeded free-electron lasers (FELs). In this paper, the dependences of high harmonic bunching efficiency in high-gain harmonic generation (HGHG), echo-enabled harmonic generation (EEHG) and phase-merging enhanced harmonic generation (PEHG) schemes on the electron beam energy spread distribution are studied. Theoretical investigations and multidimensional numerical simulations are applied to the cases of uniform and saddle beam energy distributions and compared to a traditional Gaussian distribution. It shows that the uniform and saddle electron energy distributions significantly enhance the bunching performance of HGHG FELs, while they almost have no influence on EEHG and PEHG schemes. A further start-to-end simulation example demonstrated that, with the saddle distribution of sliced beam energy spread controlled by a laser heater, the 30th harmonic can be directly generated by a single-stage HGHG scheme for a soft x-ray FEL facility.

SU‐E‐T‐146: Beam Energy Spread Estimate Based On Bragg Peak Measurement

Purpose:ProNova is installing and commissioning a two room proton therapy system in Knoxville, TN. Beam energy out of the 230MeV cyclotron was measured on Jan 24, 2015. Cyclotron beam was delivered into a Zebra multi layered IC detector calibrated in terms of penetration range in water. The analysis of the measured Bragg peak determines penetration range in water which can be subsequently converted into proton beam energy. We extended this analysis to obtain an estimate of the beam energy spread out of the cyclotron.Methods:Using Monte Carlo simulations we established the correlation between Bragg peak shape parameters (width at 50% and 80% dose levels, distal falloff) and penetration range for a monoenergetic proton beam. For large uniform field impinging on a small area detector, we observed linear dependence of each Bragg peak parameter on beam penetration range as shown in Figure A. Then we studied how this correlation changes when the shape of Bragg peak is distorted by the beam focusing conditions. As shown in Figure B, small field size or diverging beam cause Bragg peak deformation predominantly in the proximal region. The distal shape of the renormalized Bragg peaks stays nearly constant. This excludes usage of Bragg peak width parameters for energy spread estimates.Results:The measured Bragg peaks had an average distal falloff of 4.86mm, which corresponds to an effective range of 35.5cm for a monoenergetic beam. The 32.7cm measured penetration range is 2.8cm less. Passage of a 230MeV proton beam through a 2.8cm thick slab of water results in a ±0.56MeV energy spread. As a final check, we confirmed agreement between shapes of the measured Bragg peak and one generated by Monte‐Carlo code for proton beam with 0.56 MeV energy spread.Conclusion:Proton beam energy spread can be estimated using Bragg peak analysis.

Errors and optics study of a permanent magnet quadrupole system

Laser-based accelerators are gaining interest in recent years as an alternative to conventional machines [1]. Nowadays, energy and angular spread of the laser-driven beams are the main issues in application and different solutions for dedicated beam-transport lines have been proposed [2,3]. In this context a system of permanent magnet quadrupoles (PMQs) is going to be realized by INFN [2] researchers, in collaboration with SIGMAPHI [3] company in France, to be used as a collection and pre-selection system for laser driven proton beams. The definition of well specified characteristics, both in terms of performances and field quality, of the magnetic lenses is crucial for the system realization, for an accurate study of the beam dynamics and the proper matching with a magnetic selection system already realized [6,7]. Hence, different series of simulations have been used for studying the PMQs harmonic contents and stating the mechanical and magnetic tolerances in order to have reasonable good beam quality downstream the system. In this paper is reported the method used for the analysis of the PMQs errors and its validation. Also a preliminary optics characterization is presented in which are compared the effects of an ideal PMQs system with a perturbed system on a monochromatic proton beams.

Demonstration of nonlinear-energy-spread compensation in relativistic electron bunches with corrugated structures.

High quality electron beams with flat distributions in both energy and current are critical for many accelerator-based scientific facilities such as free-electron lasers and MeV ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopes. In this Letter, we report on using corrugated structures to compensate for the beam nonlinear energy chirp imprinted by the curvature of the radio-frequency field, leading to a significant reduction in beam energy spread. By using a pair of corrugated structures with orthogonal orientations, we show that the quadrupole wakefields, which, otherwise, increase beam emittance, can be effectively canceled. This work also extends the applications of corrugated structures to the low beam charge (a few pC) and low beam energy (a few MeV) regime and may have a strong impact in many accelerator-based facilities.

Narrowband inverse Compton scattering x-ray sources at high laser intensities

Narrowband x- and gamma-ray sources based on the inverse Compton scattering of laser pulses suffer from a limitation of the allowed laser intensity due to the onset of nonlinear effects that increase their bandwidth. It has been suggested that laser pulses with a suitable frequency modulation could compensate this ponderomotive broadening and reduce the bandwidth of the spectral lines, which would allow to operate narrowband Compton sources in the high-intensity regime. In this paper we, therefore, present the theory of nonlinear Compton scattering in a frequency modulated intense laser pulse. We systematically derive the optimal frequency modulation of the laser pulse from the scattering matrix element of nonlinear Compton scattering, taking into account the electron spin and recoil. We show that, for some particular scattering angle, an optimized frequency modulation completely cancels the ponderomotive broadening for all harmonics of the backscattered light. We also explore how sensitive this compensation depends on the electron beam energy spread and emittance, as well as the laser focusing.