Paper | Title | Page |
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MOP083 | Plasma Wake Excitation by Lasers or Particle Beams | 253 |
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Funding: Work supported by the Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Plasma accelerators may be driven by the ponderomotive force of an intense laser or the space-charge force of a charged particle beam. Plasma wake excitation driven by lasers or particle beams is examined, and the implications of the different physical excitation mechanisms for accelerator design are discussed. |
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MOP084 | A High Repetition Plasma Mirror for Staged Electron Acceleration | 256 |
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Funding: Acknowledgment: This work is supported by the National Science Foundation and DTRA. In order to build a compact, staged laser plasma accelerator the in-coupling of the laser beam to the different stages represents one of the key issues. To limit the spatial foot print and thus to realize a high overall acceleration gradient, a concept has to be found which realizes this in-coupling within a few centimeters. We present experiments on a tape-drive based plasma mirror which could be used to reflect the focused laser beam into the acceleration stage. References: * W. Leemans et. al, Phys. Today, 62, 44 (2009) ** G. Doumy et. al, Phys. Rev. E 69, 026402 (2004) *** B. Dromey et. al,, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75, 645 (2004) |
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MOP161 | Undulator-based Laser Wakefield Accelerator Electron Beam Diagnostic | 397 |
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Funding: This work is supported by DTRA and DOE-HEP. The design and current status of experiments to cou- ple the Tapered Hybrid Undulator (THUNDER) to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) laser plasma accelerator (LPA) to measure electron beam energy spread and emittance are presented. * W.P. Leemans et al., Nature Physics, Volume 2, Issue 10, pp. 696-699 (2006). ** C.B. Schroeder et al., Proceedings AAC08 Conference (2008). *** F. Grüner et al., Appl. Phys. B, 86(3):431–435 (2007). |
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MOP123 | Colliding Pulse Injection Control in a Laser-Plasma Accelerator | 325 |
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Funding: This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, NA-22, and in part by the Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Control of injection into a high gradient laser-plasma accelerator is presented using the beat between two ’colliding’ laser pulses to kick electrons into the plasma wake accelerating phase. Stable intersection and performance over hours of operation were obtained using active pointing control. Dependence of injector performance on laser and plasma parameters were characterized in coordination with simulations. By scanning the intersection point of the lasers, the injection position was controlled, mapping the acceleration length. Laser modifications to extend acceleration length are discussed towards production of tunable stable electron bunches as needed for applications including Thomson gamma sources and high energy colliders. |
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MOP124 | Accurate Alignment of Plasma Channels Based on Laser Centroid Oscillations | 328 |
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Funding: Work supported by the Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. A technique has been developed to accurately align a laser beam through a plasma channel by minimizing the shift in laser centroid and angle at the channel outptut. If only the shift in centroid or angle is measured, then accurate alignment is provided by minimizing laser centroid motion at the channel exit as the channel properties are scanned. The improvement in alignment accuracy pro- vided by this technique is important for minimizing electron beam pointing errors in laser plasma accelerators. |
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WEOBS1 | The Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA): A 10 GeV Laser Plasma Accelerator | 1416 |
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An overview is presented of the design of a 10 GeV laser plasma accelerator (LPA) that will be driven by a PW-class laser system and of the BELLA Project, under which the required Ti:sapphire laser system for the acceleration experiments is being installed. The basic design of the 10 GeV stage aims at operation in the quasi-linear regime, where the laser excited wakes are largely sinusoidal and allow acceleration of electrons and positrons. Simulations show that a 10 GeV electron beam can be generated in a meter scale plasma channel guided LPA operating at a density of about 1017 cm-3 and powered by laser pulses containing 30-40 J of energy in a 50-200 fs duration pulse, focused to a spotsize of 50-100 micron. The lay-out of the facility and laser system will be presented as well as the progress on building the facility. | ||