Pseudoresonant laser Wakefield acceleration driven by 10.6-μm laser light

Author

Kimura, W.D. ; Andreev, N.E. ; Babzien, M. ; Ben-Zvi, I. ; Cline, D.B. ; Dilley, C.E. ; Gottschalk, S.C. ; Hooker, S.M. ; Kusche, K.P. ; Kuznetsov, S.V. ; Pavlishin, I.V. ; Pogorelsky, I.V. ; Pogosova, A.A. ; Steinhauer, L.C. ; Ting, A. ; Yakimenko, V. ;

Author_Institution

STI Optronics Inc., Bellevue, WA, USA

Volume

33

Issue

1

fYear

2005

Firstpage

3

Lastpage

7

Abstract

This work describes an experiment to demonstrate, for the first time, laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA), driven by 10.6-μm light from a CO₂ laser. This experiment is also noteworthy because it will operate in a pseudoresonant LWFA regime, in which the laser-pulse-length is too long for resonant LWFA, but too short for self-modulated LWFA. Nonetheless, high acceleration gradients are still possible. This experiment builds upon an earlier experiment called staged electron laser acceleration (STELLA), where efficient trapping and monoenergetic laser acceleration of electrons were demonstrated using inverse free electron lasers. The aim is to apply the STELLA approach of laser-driven microbunch formation followed by laser-driven trapping and acceleration to LWFA. These capabilities are important for a practical electron linear accelerator based upon LWFA.

Keywords

electron accelerators; particle beam bunching; plasma light propagation; wakefield accelerators; 10.6 mum; CO₂; CO₂ laser; electron linear accelerator; inverse free electron lasers; laser-driven microbunch formation; laser-driven trapping; monoenergetic laser acceleration; pseudoresonant laser wakefield acceleration; staged electron laser acceleration; Acceleration; Electron accelerators; Electron traps; Free electron lasers; Laboratories; Linear accelerators; Masers; Physics; Plasma accelerators; Plasma waves;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPS.2004.841173

Filename

1396116