Physics Commons^™

Electron Self-Injection Into An Evolving Plasma Bubble: The Way To A Dark Current Free Gev-Scale Laser Accelerator, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Arnaud Beck, Sunghwan A. Yi, Vladimir N. Khudik, Bradley A. Shadwick, Erik Lefebvre, Michael C. Downer

Serge Youri Kalmykov

A time-varying electron density bubble created by the radiation pressure of a tightly focused petawatt laser pulse traps electrons of ambient rarefied plasma and accelerates them to a GeV energy over a few-cm distance. Expansion of the bubble caused by the shape variation of the self-guided pulse is the primary cause of electron self-injection in strongly rarefied plasmas (n_0 ~ 10^{17} cm^{−3}). Stabilization and contraction of the bubble extinguishes the injection. After the bubble stabilization, longitudinal non-uniformity of the accelerating gradient results in a rapid phase space rotation that produces a quasi-monoenergetic bunch well before the de-phasing limit. Combination of …