Physics Commons^™

Laser wakefield acceleration of electrons in the blowout regime can be controlled by tailoring the laser pulse phase and the plasma target. The100nm-scale bandwidth and negative frequency chirp of the optical driver compensate for the nonlinear frequency red-shift imparted by wakefield excitation.This mitigates pulse self-steepening and suppresses continuous injection. The plasma channel suppresses diffraction of the pulse leading edge, further reducing self-steepening, making injection even quieter. Besides, the channel destabilizes the pulse tail confined within the accelerator cavity (the electron density “bubble”), causing oscillations in the bubble size. The resulting periodic injection generates background-free comb-like beams – sequences of synchronized, …