All-Optical Steering of Laser-Wakefield-Accelerated Electron Beams

Popp, Antonia; Vieira, Jorge; Osterhoff, Jens; Major, Zsuzsanna; Hörlein, Rainer; Fuchs, M.; Weingartner, R.; Rowlands-Rees, T. P.; Marti, Michael; Fonseca, Ricardo; Martins, S. F.; Silva, L. O.; Hooker, S. M.; Krausz, Ferenc; Grüner, F.; Karsch, Stefan

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.215001

Cited by 109 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Such contamination is readily seen even in simulations with idealised initial conditions Froula et al 2009;Martins et al 2010;Kalmykov et al 2010Kalmykov et al , 2011a. The complicated modal structure of the incident pulse further aggravates the situation, leading to continuous off-axis injection, collective betatron oscillations (Glinec et al 2008;Mangles et al 2009;Cummings & Thomas 2011), and electron beam steering (Popp et al 2010). In practice, these phenomena currently preclude operation reliable enough to enable high-precision user experiments; reported islands of stability for selfinjection in laser and plasma parameter space remain relatively narrow (Karsch et al 2007;Mangles et al 2007;Thomas et al 2007;Hafz et al 2008;Maksimchuk et al 2008;Wiggins et al 2010).…”

Section: Benchmarkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computationally efficient methods for modelling laser wakefield acceleration in the blowout regime

Cowan¹,

Kalmykov

Beck

et al. 2012

J. Plasma Phys.

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Electron self-injection and acceleration until dephasing in the blowout regime is studied for a set of initial conditions typical of recent experiments with 100 terawatt-class lasers. Two different approaches to computationally efficient, fully explicit, three-dimensional particle-in-cell modelling are examined. First, the Cartesian code vorpal (Nieter & Cary 2004) using a perfect-dispersion electromagnetic solver precisely describes the laser pulse and bubble dynamics, taking advantage of coarser resolution in the propagation direction, with a proportionally larger time step. Using third-order splines for macroparticles helps suppress the sampling noise while keeping the usage of computational resources modest. The second way to reduce the simulation load is using reduced-geometry codes. In our case, the quasi-cylindrical code calder-circ (Lifschitz et al. 2009) uses decomposition of fields and currents into a set of poloidal modes, while the macroparticles move in the Cartesian 3D space. Cylindrically symmetry of the interaction allow using just two modes, reducing the computational load to roughly that of a planar Cartesian simulation while preserving the 3D nature of the interaction. This significant economy of resources allows using fine resolution in the direction of propagation and a small time step, making numerical dispersion vanishingly small, together with a large number of particles per cell, enabling good particle statistics. Quantitative agreement of the two simulations indicates that they are free of numerical artefacts. Both approaches thus retrieve physically correct evolution of the plasma bubble, recovering the intrinsic connection of electron self-injection to the nonlinear optical evolution of the driver.

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Section: Benchmarkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computationally efficient methods for modelling laser wakefield acceleration in the blowout regime

Cowan¹,

Kalmykov

Beck

et al. 2012

J. Plasma Phys.

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“…We can only see oscillations of the bubble in the plane of polarization of the laser (here along y) and nothing can be seen in the z-plan, which clearly indicates that this is the oscillation of the leading bunch in the laser which creates these large oscillations of the entire cavity. These oscillations of the accelerating cavity lead to acceleration of electrons off-axis, resulting in betatron oscillations inside the bubble of these accelerated electrons [49][50][51][52][53][54] .…”

Section: Pwfa Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Giga-electronvolt electrons due to a transition from laser wakefield acceleration to plasma wakefield acceleration

Masson-Laborde

Ali

et al. 2014

Physics of Plasmas

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We show through experiments that a transition from laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) regime to a plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) regime can drive electrons up to energies close to the GeV level. Initially, the acceleration mechanism is dominated by the bubble created by the laser in the nonlinear regime of LWFA, leading to an injection of a large number of electrons. After propagation beyond the depletion length, leading to a depletion of the laser pulse, whose transverse ponderomotive force is not able to sustain the bubble anymore, the high energy dense bunch of electrons propagating inside bubble will drive its own wakefield by a PWFA regime. This wakefield will be able to trap and accelerate a population of electrons up to the GeV level during this second stage. Three dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations support this analysis, and confirm the scenario.

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“…Nonlinear effects such as distortion of electron density distribution by pulse's ponderomotive force and distortion of laser pulse shape do not change such scattering essentially which is confirmed by particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations [23,24]. Figure 1(a) illustrates dynamics of a laser pulse field in a semiparabolic plasma channel near a scattering point [25] (see below).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Transient magnetized plasma as an optical element for high power laser pulses

Nakanii¹,

Hosokai²,

Iwasa³

et al. 2015

Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams

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Underdense plasma produced in gas jets by low intensity laser prepulses in the presence of a static magnetic field, B ∼ 0.3 T, is shown experimentally to become an optical element allowing steering of tightly focused high power femtosecond laser pulses within several degrees along with essential enhancement of pulse's focusability. Strong laser prepulses form a density ramp perpendicularly to magnetic field direction and, owing to the light refraction, main laser pulses propagate along the magnetic field even if it is tilted from the laser axis. Electrons generated in the laser pulse wake are well collimated and follow in the direction of the magnetic field; their characteristics are measured to be not sensitive to the tilt of magnetic field up to angles AE5°.

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All-Optical Steering of Laser-Wakefield-Accelerated Electron Beams

Cited by 109 publications

References 19 publications

Computationally efficient methods for modelling laser wakefield acceleration in the blowout regime

Computationally efficient methods for modelling laser wakefield acceleration in the blowout regime

Giga-electronvolt electrons due to a transition from laser wakefield acceleration to plasma wakefield acceleration

Transient magnetized plasma as an optical element for high power laser pulses

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