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| WEYKI02 |
Experimental Demonstration of 1 GeV Energy Gain in a Laser Wakefield Accelerator
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- A. J. Gonsalves, S. M. Hooker
OXFORDphysics, Oxford, Oxon
- D. L. Bruhwiler, J. R. Cary
Tech-X, Boulder, Colorado
- E. Cormier-Michel
University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, Nevada
- E. Esarey, C. G.R. Geddes, W. Leemans, K. Nakamura, C. B. Schroeder, C. Toth
LBNL, Berkeley, California
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GeV-class electron accelerators have a broad range of uses, including synchrotron facilities, free electron lasers, and high-energy particle physics. The accelerating gradient achievable with conventional radio frequency (RF) accelerators is limited by electrical breakdown within the accelerating cavity to a few tens of MeV, so the production of energetic beams requires large, expensive accelerators. One promising technology to reduce the cost and size of these accelerators (and to push the energy frontier for high-energy physics) is the laser-wakefield accelerator (LWFA), since these devices can sustain electric fields of hundreds of GV/m. In this talk, results will be presented on the first demonstration of GeV-class beams using an intense laser beam. Laser pulses with peak power ranging from 10-40TW were guided in a 3.3 cm long gas-filled capillary discharge waveguide, allowing the production of high-quality electron beams with energy up to 1 GeV. The electron beam characteristics and laser guiding, and their dependence on laser and plasma parameters will be discussed and compared to simulations.
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Slides
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| WEOBKI01 |
Stable Electron Beams with Low Absolute Energy Spread from a Laser Wakefield Accelerator with Plasma Density Ramp Controlled Injection
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- C. G.R. Geddes, E. Esarey, W. Leemans, K. Nakamura, D. Panasenko, G. R.D. Plateau, C. B. Schroeder, C. Toth
LBNL, Berkeley, California
- J. R. Cary
Tech-X, Boulder, Colorado
- E. Cormier-Michel
University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, Nevada
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Funding: Supported by DOE, including grant DE-AC02-05CH11231, DARPA, and by an INCITE computational award.
Laser wakefield accelerators produce accelerating gradients up to hundreds of GeV/m and narrow energy spread, and have recently demonstrated energies up to GeV and improved stability [*,**] using electrons self trapped from the plasma. Controlled injection and staging can further improve beam quality by circumventing tradeoffs between energy, stability, and energy spread/emittance. We present experiments demonstrating production of a stable electron beam near 1 MeV with 100 keV level energy spread and central energy stability by using the plasma density profile to control self injection, and supporting simulations. A 10 TW laser pulse was focused near the downstream edge of a mm-long hydrogen gas jet. The plasma density near focus is decreasing in the laser propagation direction, which changes the wake phase velocity and reduces the trapping threshold. This allows stable self trapping and low absolute energy spread. Simulations indicate that such beams can be post accelerated to form high energy, high quality, stable beams, and experiments are under investigation.
* Geddes et al, Nature v431 no7008, 538 (2004).** Leemans et al, Nature Physics v2 no10, p696 (2006)
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Slides
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