The production of high-quality electron bunches in Laser Wake Field Acceleration relies on the possibility to inject ultra-low emittance bunches in the plasma wave. In this paper we present a new bunch injection scheme in which electrons extracted by ionization are trapped by a large-amplitude plasma wave driven by a train of resonant ultrashort pulses. In the REsonant Multi-Pulse Ionization (REMPI) injection scheme, the main portion of a single ultrashort (e.g Ti:Sa) laser system pulse is temporally shaped as a sequence of resonant sub-pulses, while a minor portion acts as an ionizing pulse. Simulations show that high-quality electron bunches with normalized emittance as low as 0.08 mm×mrad and 0.65% energy spread can be obtained with a single present-day 100TW-class Ti:Sa laser system.

This report presents the conceptual design of a new European research infrastructure EuPRAXIA. The concept has been established over the last four years in a unique collaboration of 41 laboratories within a Horizon 2020 design study funded by the European Union. EuPRAXIA is the first European project that develops a dedicated particle accelerator research infrastructure based on novel plasma acceleration concepts and laser technology. It focuses on the development of electron accelerators and underlying technologies, their user communities, and the exploitation of existing accelerator infrastructures in Europe. EuPRAXIA has involved, amongst others, the international laser community and industry to build links and bridges with accelerator science — through realising synergies, identifying disruptive ideas, innovating, and fostering knowledge exchange. The Eu-PRAXIA project aims at the construction of an innovative electron accelerator using laser- and electron-beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration that offers a significant reduction in size and possible savings in cost over current state-of-the-art radiofrequency-based accelerators. The foreseen electron energy range of one to five gigaelectronvolts (GeV) and its performance goals will enable versatile applications in various domains, e.g. as a compact free-electron laser (FEL), compact sources for medical imaging and positron generation, table-top test beams for particle detectors, as well as deeply penetrating X-ray and gamma-ray sources for material testing. EuPRAXIA is designed to be the required stepping stone to possible future plasma-based facilities, such as linear colliders at the high-energy physics (HEP) energy frontier. Consistent with a high-confidence approach, the project includes measures to retire risk by establishing scaled technology demonstrators. This report includes preliminary models for project implementation, cost and schedule that would allow operation of the full Eu-PRAXIA facility within 8—10 years.

This work addresses the features of fast particle transport in the bump-on-tail problem for varying the width of the fluctuation spectrum, in the view of possible applications to studies of energetic particle transport in fusion plasmas. Our analysis is built around the idea that strongly-shaped beams do not relax through diffusion only and that there exists an intermediate time scale where the relaxations are convective (ballistic-like). We cast this idea in the form of a self-consistent nonlinear dynamical model, which extends the classic equations of the quasi-linear theory to "broad" beams with internal structure. We also present numerical simulation results of the relaxation of a broad beam of energetic particles in cold plasma. These generally demonstrate the mixed diffusive-convective features of supra-thermal particle transport essentially depending on nonlinear wave-particle interactions and phase-space structures. Taking into account the modes of the stable linear spectrum is crucial for the self-consistent evolution of the distribution function and the fluctuation intensity spectrum.

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