The acceleration of a high-charge electron bunch to 10 GeV in a 10-cm nanoparticle-assisted wakefield accelerator

Abstract

An intense laser pulse focused onto a plasma can excite nonlinear plasma waves. Under appropriate conditions, electrons from the background plasma are trapped in the plasma wave and accelerated to ultra-relativistic velocities. This scheme is called a laser wakefield accelerator. In this work, we present results from a laser wakefield acceleration experiment using a petawatt-class laser to excite the wakefields as well as nanoparticles to assist the injection of electrons into the accelerating phase of the wakefields. We find that a 10-cm-long, nanoparticle-assisted laser wakefield accelerator can generate 340 pC, 10 ± 1.86 GeV electron bunches with a 3.4 GeV rms convolved energy spread and a 0.9 mrad rms divergence. It can also produce bunches with lower energies in the 4–6 GeV range.

Quasi-monoenergetic electron beam from LWFA: analytical approach

“…Laser-plasma electron accelerators are currently developed in two directions: GeV energy beam generation with highenergy lasers [1,2] and developing systems with ones-tens of MeV energy and high repetition rate up to kHz [3][4][5][6]. In the latter case, laser pulses of energies limited to tens of mJ are used.…”

Beijing Union Medical College Hospital and China’s Modern Medical Development

“…1(a). The high-energy electron beam can be obtained by current laser wakefield accelerators [48], and the central axis C a of which in our scheme aligns with the x-axis. In the scheme, γ-photons are generated through the nonlinear Compton scattering (NCS) process , e − + nω 0 → ω γ + e − , when the STOV pulse collides headon with the high-energy electron beam.…”

Energy stabilization of high-charge bunches from laser plasma accelerators

“…The enlarging footprint has become a significant limitation for future accelerators with higher energy. Laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) [2,3], which can provide an accelerating gradient approximately three orders of magnitude higher and therefore a footprint orders of magnitude smaller [4][5][6][7], have become one of the most promising research frontiers in the accelerator community [8].…”