Generation and pointing stabilization of multi-GeV electron beams from a laser plasma accelerator driven in a pre-formed plasma waveguidea)

Transition of the BELLA PW laser system towards a collaborative research facility in laser plasma science

“…Examples include an active beam pointing system that was written entirely by a "user" using the GUI framework of the control system. Detailed temporal and spatial diagnostics of the laser beam before and after the interaction, combined with in-situ diagnostics of the plasma interaction region and the emanating electron beams (energy spectrum, charge, divergence) enabled the production and characterization of LPA-generated 4.25 GeV e-beams from a 9-cm plasma channel powered by 310 TW laser pulses (15 J on target) [2,3].…”

“…After the successful commissioning in 2013 and early test operations [1], it quickly produced cutting edge results in high-peak-power laser-plasma interaction and LPA studies [2,3].…”

Pico-coulomb charge measured at BELLA to percent-level precision using a Turbo-ICT

“…To perform these experiments, a 9 cm long and 500 µm diameter capillary discharge target similar to the one described in [11,13] was used. The gas flowed into the capillary was comprised of 1% nitrogen and 99% helium.…”

“…2, and a schematic including laser diagnostics can be found in Ref. [13]. Two types of target were used for comparison: a gas-jet target and a capillary-discharge target that are described in the following sections.…”

Diagnostics and controls for spatiotemporal couplings for laser-plasma accelerator drivers

“…For example, in the highly non-linear regime [10], small variations in input laser peak power can result in large output fluctuations [11]. Detailed knowledge of the laser's transverse mode properties were crucial to understanding laser propagation and generation of high energy electron beams [6,12,13]. Spatiotemporal couplings (STCs) have not been thoroughly studied for LPAs.…”