Tapered capillaries applied in laser wakefield acceleration

Author

Wiggins, S. Mark ; Abuazoum, Salima ; Vieux, Gregory ; Welsh, Gregor H. ; Issac, Riju C. ; Islam, M. Ranaul ; Ersfeld, Bernhard ; Brunetti, Enrico ; Cipiccia, Silvia ; Grant, David W. ; Jaroszynski, Dino A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Univ. of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

fYear

2012

fDate

8-13 July 2012

Abstract

This paper presents realisation of linearly tapered capillary discharge waveguides (CDWs), manufactured using a femtosecond laser micromachining technique. Waveguiding of a low power, 50 fs duration laser pulse is demonstrated and, despite a slight mismatch of the laser focal spot size with respect to the capillary entrance size, efficient guiding of the Gaussian-shaped laser pulse is obtained. Energy transmission of 80% is obtained for optimal delay of the laser pulse arrival time with respect to the discharge current pulse.

Keywords

Gaussian distribution; capillarity; discharges (electric); laser beam machining; micromachining; optical fabrication; optical pulse generation; optical waveguides; plasma accelerators; plasma light propagation; plasma production by laser; wakefield accelerators; Gaussian-shaped laser pulse; capillary discharge waveguides; discharge current pulse; femtosecond laser micromachining; laser pulse arrival time; laser wakefield acceleration; tapered capillaries; time 50 fs; Acceleration; Educational institutions; Gas lasers; Laser beams; Laser theory; Plasma density; Waveguide lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Plasma Science (ICOPS), 2012 Abstracts IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Edinburgh

ISSN

0730-9244

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-2127-4

Electronic_ISBN

0730-9244

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PLASMA.2012.6383994

Filename

6383994