UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal
IPFN, Lisbon, Portugal
A series of laser wakefield accelerator experiments leading to electron energy exceeding 1 GeV are described. Theoretical concepts and experimental methods developed while conducting experiments using the 10 TW Ti:Sapphire laser at UCLA were implemented and transferred successfully to the 100 TW Calisto Laser System at the Jupiter Laser Facility at LLNL. To reach electron energies greater than 1 GeV with current laser systems, it is necessary to inject and trap electrons into the wake and to guide the laser for more than 1 cm of plasma. Using the 10 TW laser, the physics of self-guiding and the limitations in regards to pump depletion over cm-scale plasmas were demonstrated. Furthermore, a novel injection mechanism was explored which allows injection by ionization at conditions necessary for generating electron energies greater than a GeV. The 10 TW results were followed by self-guiding at the 100 TW scale over cm plasma lengths. The energy of the self-injected electrons, at 3x1018 cm-3 plasma density, was limited by dephasing to 720 MeV. Implementation of ionization injection allowed extending the acceleration well beyond a centimeter and 1.4 GeV electrons were measured.
TUOBN2
LMU, Garching, Germany
USC, Los Angeles, California, USA
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
We present initial experimental results showing the excitation of plasma wakefields by a train of two drive bunches. These wakefields are experienced by a trailing witness bunch that gains energy while retaining a finite energy spread. These well controlled plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) experiments are important to test the theory of the PWFA and serve as a testbed for techniques that will be used in high energy experiments.
SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
USC, Los Angeles, California, USA
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.
MPI-P, München, Germany
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal
LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
BINP SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia
USC, Los Angeles, California, USA
HHUD, Dusseldorf, Germany
IPFN, Lisbon, Portugal
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
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.