Laser-plasma accelerators of only a centimetre’s length have produced nearly monoenergetic electron bunches with energy as high as 1 GeV. Scaling these compact accelerators to multi-gigaelectronvolt energy would open the prospect of building X-ray free-electron lasers and linear colliders hundreds of times smaller than conventional facilities, but the 1 GeV barrier has so far proven insurmountable. Here, by applying new petawatt laser technology, we produce electron bunches with a spectrum prominently peaked at 2 GeV with only a few per cent energy spread and unprecedented sub-milliradian divergence. Petawatt pulses inject ambient plasma electrons into the laser-driven accelerator at much lower density than was previously possible, thereby overcoming the principal physical barriers to multi-gigaelectronvolt acceleration: dephasing between laser-driven wake and accelerating electrons and laser pulse erosion. Simulations indicate that with improvements in the laser-pulse focus quality, acceleration to nearly 10 GeV should be possible with the available pulse energy.

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We identify three regimes of correlated GeV-electron/keV-betatron-x-ray generation by a laser-plasma accelerator driven by the Texas Petawatt laser, and relate them to variations in strength of blowout, injection geometry and beam loading.

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Increasingly stringent environmental regulation imposed on both the military and civilian sectors has created a growing demand for alternative abatement methods for a variety of hazardous compounds. One alternative, the nonthermal plasma, shows promise of providing an efficient means for the destruction of dilute concentrations of hazardous air pollutants. The Dahlgren Laboratory of the Naval Surface Warfare Center has extensively investigated one type of nonthermal plasma discharge, the pulsed corona reactor, for the destruction of volatile organic compounds and chemical warfare agents. In this reactor, a fast rise time (∼10 ns), short duration (<100 ns), high-voltage pulse is repetitively delivered to a wire-cylinder electrode geometry, thereby producing a multitude of streamer discharges along its length. The resulting nonthermal plasma contains highly reactive chemical radicals which can interact with and destroy the hazardous molecules entrained in the ambient atmosphere flowing through the reactor volume. Increased electrical efficiency was obtained using a combination of high efficiency constant-current capacitor-charging, high repetition-rate spark gap switching, and resonant energy transfer to the reactor. Promising results have been obtained for toluene, methylene chloride, and dichlorodifluoromethane in air at concentrations of a few hundred parts per million. The device has been operated at voltages up to 30 kV, pulse repetition rates up to 1.4 kHz, and flow rates up to 60 ℓ/min. Detailed electrical measurements have been made to properly characterize the electrical properties of the pulsed corona reactor and to validate subsequent improvements in the reactor energy efficiency.