Author: Tochitsky, S.
Paper Title Page
MOP142 Development of Picosecond CO2 Laser Driver for an MeV Ion Source 355
 
  • S. Tochitsky, D.J. Haberberger, C. Joshi
    UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
 
  Funding: This work is supported by DOE grant DE-FG02-92ER40727.
Laser-Driven Ion Acceleration in thin foils has demonstrated high-charge, low-emittance MeV ion beams with a picosecond duration. Such high-brightness beams are very attractive for a compact ion source or an injector for RF accelerators. However in the case of foils scaling of the pulse repetition rate and improving shot-to-shot reproducibility is a serious challenge. CO2 laser-plasma interactions provide a possibility for using a debris free gas jet for target normal sheath acceleration of ions. Gas jets have the advantage of precise density control around the critical plasma density for 10 um pulses (1019 cm-3) and can be run at 1-10 Hz. The master oscillator–power amplifier CO2 laser system at the UCLA Neptune Laboratory is being upgraded to generate 1 J, 3 ps pulses at 1Hz. For this purpose, a new 8 atm CO2 module is used to amplify a 3 ps pulse to ~10 GW level. Final amplification is realized in a 1-m long TEA CO2 amplifier, for which the bandwidth necessary for 3 ps pulses is provided by the field broadening mechanism. Modeling of the pulse amplification shows that ~0.3 TW power is achievable that should be sufficient for producing 1-3 MeV H+ protons from the gas plasma.
 
 
MOP143 Enhanced Laser-Driven Ion Acceleration via Forward Raman Scattering in a Ramped Gas Target 358
 
  • S. Tochitsky, D.J. Haberberger, C. Joshi, W.B. Mori, F.S. Tsung
    UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
 
  Funding: This work is supported by DOE grant DE-FG02-92ER40727.
CO2 laser-plasma interactions provide a unique parameter space for using a gas jet for Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) of ions instead of a thin foil target. The generation of 1-5 MeV protons from the interaction of a 3 ps TW CO2 laser pulse with a gas target with a peak density around the critical plasma density (1019 cm-3) has been studied by 2D particle-in-cell simulations. The proton acceleration in the preformed plasma, having similar to the gas jet symmetric, linearly ramped density distribution, occurs via formation of a sheath of hot electrons on the back surface of the target. The maximum energy of the hot electrons and, hence net acceleration of protons is mainly defined by Forward Raman scattering instability in the underdense part of the plasma. This mechanism of an additional heating of electrons is strongly affected by nonlinear laser-plasma interactions and results in the proton energy enhancement by more than an order of magnitude in comparison with the regular ponderomotive force scaling of TNSA. Forward directed ion beams from a gaseous target can find an application as a high-brightness ion source-injector.
 
 
TUOBN6 Production of 25 MeV Protons in CO2 Laser-Plasma Interactions in a Gas Jet 721
 
  • D.J. Haberberger, C. Gong, C. Joshi, S. Tochitsky
    UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
 
  Funding: This work is supported by DOE grant DE-FG02-92ER40727 and NSF grant PHY-0936266
At the Neptune Laboratory at UCLA, we have developed a high-power CO2 MOPA laser system which produces world record multi-terawatt 10um pulses. The CO2 laser pulses consist of a train of 3ps pulses separated by 18ps, each with a peak power of up to 4TW and a total pulse train energy of ~100J. These relativistic laser pulses are applied for Laser Driven Ion Acceleration in an H2 gas jet operated around the critical density of 1019 cm-3 for 10um light using the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration mechanism. The laser is focused into the gas jet reaching a normalized field strength of a0~2 in vacuum. For these conditions, protons with a maximum energy of 25MeV and a narrow energy spread of ΔE/E < 1% are recorded. Initial analysis of these experimental results shows a stronger scaling of the proton energy than that predicted from the ponderomotive force, and highlights the importance of an accumulated effect of multiple CO2 laser pulses lasting over 100ps. The temporal dynamics of the overdense plasma slab are probed with a picosecond 532nm pulse and the results will be discussed.
 
 
TUOBN4 Plasma Wakefield Experiments at FACET 715
 
  • M.J. Hogan, R.J. England, J.T. Frederico, C. Hast, S.Z. Li, M.D. Litos, D.R. Walz
    SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
  • W. An, C.E. Clayton, C. Joshi, W. Lu, K.A. Marsh, W.B. Mori, S. Tochitsky
    UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
  • P. Muggli, S.F. Pinkerton, Y. Shi
    USC, Los Angeles, California, USA
 
  Funding: Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-76SF00515.
FACET, the Facility for Advanced Accelerator and Experimental Tests, is a new facility being constructed in sector 20 of the SLAC linac primarily to study beam driven plasma wakefield acceleration beginning in summer 2011. The nominal FACET parameters are 23GeV, 3nC electron bunches compressed to ~20μm long and focused to ~10μm wide. The intense fields of the FACET bunches will be used to field ionize neutral lithium or cesium vapor produced in a heat pipe oven. Previous experiments at SLAC demonstrated 50GeV/m gradients in an 85cm field ionized lithium plasma where the interaction distance was limited by head erosion. Simulations indicate the lower ionization potential of cesium will decrease the rate of head erosion and increase single stage performance. The initial experimental program will compare the performance of lithium and cesium plasma sources with single and double bunches. Later experiments will investigate improved performance with a pre-ionized cesium plasma. The status of the experiments and expected performance are reviewed.
 
slides icon Slides TUOBN4 [13.080 MB]