Plasma and Beam Physics Commons^™

Optically Controlled Laser-Plasma Electron Acceleration For Compact Gamma-Ray Sources, Serge Y. Kalmykov, X. Davoine, Isaac Ghebregziabher, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Femtosecond Pulse Trains Of Polychromatic Inverse Compton Γ-Rays From Designer Electron Beams Produced By Laser-Plasma Acceleration In Plasma Channels, Serge Y. Kalmykov, Isaac Ghebregziabher, X. Davoine, Remi Lehe, Agustin F. Lifschitz, Victor Malka, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Accordion Effect Revisited: Generation Of Comb-Like Electron Beams In Plasma Channels, Serge Y. Kalmykov, X. Davoine, Remi Lehe, Agustin F. Lifschitz, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Customizable Electron Beams From Optically Controlled Laser Plasma Acceleration For Γ-Ray Sources Based On Inverse Thomson Scattering, Serge Y. Kalmykov, X. Davoine, Isaac Ghebregziabher, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Control And Optimization Of A Staged Laser-Wakefield Accelerator, Grigory V. Golovin, Sudeep Banerjee, Shouyuan Chen, Nathan D. Powers, Cheng Liu, Wenchao Yan, Jia Zhang, Ping Zhang, Baozhen Zhao, Donald Umstadter

Donald Umstadter Publications

We report results of an experimental study of laser-wakefield acceleration of electrons, using a staged device based on a double-jet gas target that enables independent injection and acceleration stages. This novel scheme is shown to produce stable, quasi-monoenergetic, and tunable electron beams. We show that optimal accelerator performance is achieved by systematic variation of five critical parameters. For the injection stage, we show that the amount of trapped charge is controlled by the gas density, composition, and laser power. For the acceleration stage, the gas density and the length of the jet are found to determine the final electron energy. …

Physical Processes At Work In Sub-30fs, Pw Laser Pulse-Driven Plasma Accelerators: Towards Gev Electron Acceleration Experiments At Cilex Facility., Arnaud Beck, Serge Y. Kalmykov, Xavier Davoine, Agustin F. Lifschitz, Bradley A. Shadwick, Victor Malka, Arnd E. Specka

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Optimal regimes and physical processes at work are identified for the first round of laser wakefield acceleration experiments proposed at a future CILEX facility. The Apollon-10P CILEX laser, delivering fully compressed, near-PW-power pulses of sub-25 fs duration, is well suited for driving electron density wakes in the blowout regime in cm-length gas targets. Early destruction of the pulse (partly due to energy depletion)prevents electrons from reaching dephasing, limiting the energy gain to about 3 GeV. However, the optimal operating regimes, found with reduced and full three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, show high energy efficiency, with about 10%of incident pulse energy transferred to …

All-Optical Control Of Electron Self-Injection In Millimeter-Scale, Tapered Dense Plasmas., Serge Y. Kalmykov, Xavier Davoine, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

It is demonstrated that a laser pulse with an ultrahigh bandwidth (400 nm) is an asset for future high-repetition-rate , quasimonoenergetic (QME), GeV-scale laser plasma electron accelerators. Manipulating the phase of the driver has a direct impact on evolution of the accelerating bucket (a cavity of electron density maintained by the pressure of the laser pulse radiation), making it possible to control electron self-injection and the final parameters of the QME beam by purely optical means. The large bandwidth makes it possible to compensate for the frequency red-shift accumulated at the pulse leading edge in transit through the plasma. Advancing …

Stable, Tunable, Quasimonoenergetic Electron Beams Produced In A Laser Wakefield Near The Threshold For Self-Injection, Sudeep Banerjee, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Nathan D. Powers, Gregory Golovin, Vidiya Ramanathan, Nathan J. Cunningham, Kevin J. Brown, Shouyuan Chen, Isaac Ghebregziabher, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter, Benjamin A. Cowan, David L. Bruhwiler, Arnaud Beck, Erik Lefebvre

Donald P. Umstadter

Stable operation of a laser-plasma accelerator near the threshold for electron self-injection in the blowout regime has been demonstrated with 25–60 TW, 30 fs laser pulses focused into a 3–4 millimeter length gas jet. Nearly Gaussian shape and high nanosecond contrast of the focused pulse appear to be critically important for controllable, tunable generation of 250–430 MeV electron bunches with a low energy spread, ~ 10 pC charge, a few-mrad divergence and pointing stability, and a vanishingly small low-energy background. The physical nature of the near-threshold behavior is examined using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Simulations indicate that properly locating the nonlinear …

Stable, Tunable, Quasimonoenergetic Electron Beams Produced In A Laser Wakefield Near The Threshold For Self-Injection, Sudeep Banerjee, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Nathan D. Powers, Gregory Golovin, Vidiya Ramanathan, Nathan J. Cunningham, Kevin J. Brown, Shouyuan Chen, Isaac Ghebregziabher, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter, Benjamin A. Cowan, David L. Bruhwiler, Arnaud Beck, Erik Lefebvre

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Stable operation of a laser-plasma accelerator near the threshold for electron self-injection in the blowout regime has been demonstrated with 25–60 TW, 30 fs laser pulses focused into a 3–4 millimeter length gas jet. Nearly Gaussian shape and high nanosecond contrast of the focused pulse appear to be critically important for controllable, tunable generation of 250–430 MeV electron bunches with a low energy spread, ~ 10 pC charge, a few-mrad divergence and pointing stability, and a vanishingly small low-energy background. The physical nature of the near-threshold behavior is examined using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Simulations indicate that properly locating the nonlinear …

Dark-Current-Free Laser-Plasma Acceleration In Blowout Regime Using Nonlinear Plasma Lens, Serguei Y. Kalmykov

Serge Youri Kalmykov

It is demonstrated that a thin dense plasma slab (lens), placed before a multi-centimeter-length, low-density plasma (accelerator), overfocuses an incident petawatt laser pulse at a controlled location inside the accelerator, creating an expanding electron density bubble that traps plasma electrons over a brief time interval. As soon as the pulse stabilizes and self-guiding begins, the bubble stabilizes and transforms into the first (non-broken) bucket of a conventional three-dimensional nonlinear plasma wave, eliminating any chance for further injection. A well collimated, quasi-monoenergetic electron bunch with a zero low-energy background further accelerates to a multi-GeV energy.

Petawatt-Laser-Driven Wakefield Acceleration Of Electrons To 2 Gev In 10^{17} Cm^{-3} Plasma, Xiaoming Wang, Rafal B. Zgadzaj, Neil Fazel, Sunghwan A. Yi, X. Zhang, Watson Henderson, Yen-Yu Zhang, Rick Korzekwa, Hai-En Tsai, C.-H. Pai, Zhengyan Li, Hernan Quevedo, Gilliss Dyer, Erhard W. Gaul, Mikael Martinez, Aaron Bernstein, Ted Borger, M. Spinks, M. Donovan, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Vladimir N. Khudik, Gennady Shvets, Todd Ditmire, Michael C. Downer

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Electron self-injection into a laser-plasma accelerator (LPA) driven by the Texas Petawatt (TPW) laser is reported at plasma densities 1.7 - 6.2 x 10^{17} cm^{-3}. Energy and charge of the electron beam, ranging from 0.5 GeV to 2 GeV and tens to hundreds of pC, respectively, depended strongly on laser beam quality and plasma density. Angular beam divergence was consistently around 0.5 mrad (FWHM), while shot-to-shot pointing fluctuations were limited to ±1.4 mrad rms. Betatron x-rays with tens of keV photon energy are also clearly observed.

Sub-Millimeter-Scale, 100-Mev-Class Quasi-Monoenergetic Laser Plasma Accelerator Based On All-Optical Control Of Dark Current In The Blowout Regime, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Xavier Davoine, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

It is demonstrated that by negatively chirping the frequency of a 20-fs, 15-TW driving laser pulse with an ultrabroad bandwidth (corresponding to a sub-2-cycle transform-limited duration it is possible to prevent early compression of the pulse into an optical shock, thus reducing expansion of the accelerating plasma bucket (electron density "bubble") and delaying dephasing of self-injected and accelerated electrons. These features help suppress unwanted continuous self-injection (dark current) in the blowout regime, making possible to use the entire dephasing length to generate low-background, quasi-monoenergetic 200-MeV-scale electron beams from sub-mm-length, dense plasmas (n_{e0} = 1.3 x 10^{19} cm^{−3}).

Computationally Efficient Methods For Modelling Laser Wakefield Acceleration In The Blowout Regime, Benjamin M. Cowan, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Arnaud Beck, Xavier Davoine, Kyle Bunkers, Agustin F. Lifschitz, Erik Lefebvre, David L. Bruhwiler, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter

Donald P. Umstadter

Electron self-injection and acceleration until dephasing in the blowout regime is studied for a set of initial conditions typical of recent experiments with 100-terawatt-class lasers. Two different approaches to computationally efficient, fully explicit, 3D particle-in-cell modelling are examined. First, the Cartesian code VORPAL (Nieter, C. and Cary, J. R. 2004 VORPAL: a versatile plasma simulation code. J. Comput. Phys. 196, 538) using a perfect-dispersion electromagnetic solver precisely describes the laser pulse and bubble dynamics, taking advantage of coarser resolution in the propagation direction, with a proportionally larger time step. Using third-order splines for macroparticles helps suppress the sampling noise while …

Computationally Efficient Methods For Modelling Laser Wakefield Acceleration In The Blowout Regime, Benjamin M. Cowan, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Arnaud Beck, Xavier Davoine, Kyle Bunkers, Agustin F. Lifschitz, Erik Lefebvre, David L. Bruhwiler, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Electron self-injection and acceleration until dephasing in the blowout regime is studied for a set of initial conditions typical of recent experiments with 100-terawatt-class lasers. Two different approaches to computationally efficient, fully explicit, 3D particle-in-cell modelling are examined. First, the Cartesian code VORPAL (Nieter, C. and Cary, J. R. 2004 VORPAL: a versatile plasma simulation code. J. Comput. Phys. 196, 538) using a perfect-dispersion electromagnetic solver precisely describes the laser pulse and bubble dynamics, taking advantage of coarser resolution in the propagation direction, with a proportionally larger time step. Using third-order splines for macroparticles helps suppress the sampling noise while …

Generation Of Tunable, 100–800 Mev Quasi-Monoenergetic Electron Beams From A Laser-Wakefield Accelerator In The Blowout Regime, Sudeep Banerjee, Nathan D. Powers, Vidiya Ramanathan, Isaac Ghebregziabher, Kevin J. Brown, Chakra M. Maharjan, Shouyuan Chen, Arnaud Beck, Erik Lefebvre, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter

Donald P. Umstadter

In this paper, we present results on a scalable high-energy electron source based on laser wakefield acceleration. The electron accelerator using 30 - 80 TW, 30 fs laser pulses, operates in the blowout regime, and produces high-quality, quasi-monoenergetic electron beams in the range 100 - 800 MeV. These beams have angular divergence of 1 - 4 mrad, and 5 - 25 percent energy spread, with a resulting brightness 10^{11} electrons mm^{-2} MeV^{-1} mrad^{-2}. The beam parameters can be tuned by varying the laser and plasma conditions. The use of a high-quality laser pulse and appropriate target conditions enables optimization of …

Generation Of Tunable, 100–800 Mev Quasi-Monoenergetic Electron Beams From A Laser-Wakefield Accelerator In The Blowout Regime, Sudeep Banerjee, Nathan D. Powers, Vidiya Ramanathan, Isaac Ghebregziabher, Kevin J. Brown, Chakra M. Maharjan, Shouyuan Chen, Arnaud Beck, Erik Lefebvre, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter

Serge Youri Kalmykov

In this paper, we present results on a scalable high-energy electron source based on laser wakefield acceleration. The electron accelerator using 30 - 80 TW, 30 fs laser pulses, operates in the blowout regime, and produces high-quality, quasi-monoenergetic electron beams in the range 100 - 800 MeV. These beams have angular divergence of 1 - 4 mrad, and 5 - 25 percent energy spread, with a resulting brightness 10^{11} electrons mm^{-2} MeV^{-1} mrad^{-2}. The beam parameters can be tuned by varying the laser and plasma conditions. The use of a high-quality laser pulse and appropriate target conditions enables optimization of …

Laser Plasma Acceleration With A Negatively Chirped Pulse: All-Optical Control Over Dark Current In The Blowout Regime, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Arnaud Beck, Xavier Davoine, Erik Lefebvre, Bradley A. Shadwick

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Recent experiments with 100 terawatt-class, sub-50 femtosecond laser pulses show that electrons self-injected into a laser-driven electron density bubble can be accelerated above 0.5 gigaelectronvolt energy in a sub-centimetre length rarefied plasma. To reach this energy range, electrons must ultimately outrun the bubble and exit the accelerating phase; this, however, does not ensure high beam quality. Wake excitation increases the laser pulse bandwidth by red-shifting its head, keeping the tail unshifted. Anomalous group velocity dispersion of radiation in plasma slows down the red-shifted head, compressing the pulse into a few-cycle-long piston of relativistic intensity. Pulse transformation into a piston causes …

Physics Of Quasi-Monoenergetic Laser-Plasma Acceleration Of Electrons In The Blowout Regime, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Bradley A. Shadwick, Arnaud Beck, Erik Lefebvre

Serge Youri Kalmykov

No abstract provided.

Electron Self-Injection Into An Evolving Plasma Bubble: Quasi-Monoenergetic Laser-Plasma Acceleration In The Blowout Regime, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Arnaud Beck, Sunghwan A. Yi, Vladimir N. Khudik, Michael C. Downer, Erik Lefebvre, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter

Donald P. Umstadter

An electron density bubble driven in a rarefied uniform plasma by a slowly evolving laser pulse goes through periods of adiabatically slow expansions and contractions. Bubble expansion causes robust self-injection of initially quiescent plasma electrons, whereas stabilization and contraction terminate self-injection thus limiting injected charge; concomitant phase space rotation reduces the bunch energy spread. In regimes relevant to experiments with hundred terawatt- to petawatt-class lasers, bubble dynamics and, hence, the self-injection process are governed primarily by the driver evolution. Collective transverse fields of the trapped electron bunch reduce the accelerating gradient and slow down phase space rotation. Bubble expansion followed …

Electron Self-Injection Into An Evolving Plasma Bubble: Quasi-Monoenergetic Laser-Plasma Acceleration In The Blowout Regime, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Arnaud Beck, Sunghwan A. Yi, Vladimir N. Khudik, Michael C. Downer, Erik Lefebvre, Bradley A. Shadwick, Donald P. Umstadter

Serge Youri Kalmykov

An electron density bubble driven in a rarefied uniform plasma by a slowly evolving laser pulse goes through periods of adiabatically slow expansions and contractions. Bubble expansion causes robust self-injection of initially quiescent plasma electrons, whereas stabilization and contraction terminate self-injection thus limiting injected charge; concomitant phase space rotation reduces the bunch energy spread. In regimes relevant to experiments with hundred terawatt- to petawatt-class lasers, bubble dynamics and, hence, the self-injection process are governed primarily by the driver evolution. Collective transverse fields of the trapped electron bunch reduce the accelerating gradient and slow down phase space rotation. Bubble expansion followed …

Dark-Current-Free Petawatt Laser-Driven Wakefield Accelerator Based On Electron Self-Injection Into An Expanding Plasma Bubble, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Sunghwan A. Yi, Arnaud Beck, Agustin F. Lifschitz, Xavier Davoine, Erik Lefebvre, Vladimir N. Khudik, Gennady Shvets, Michael C. Downer

Serge Youri Kalmykov

A dark-current-free plasma accelerator driven by a short (~ 150 fs) self-guided petawatt laser pulse is proposed. The accelerator uses two plasma layers, one of which, short and dense, acts as a thin nonlinear lens. It is followed by a long rarefied plasma (~ 10^{17} electrons cm^{−3}) in which background electrons are trapped and accelerated by a nonlinear laser wakefield. The pulse overfocused by the plasma lens diffracts in low-density plasma as in vacuum and drives in its wake a rapidly expanding electron density bubble. The expanding bubble effectively traps initially quiescent electrons. The trapped charge given by quasi-cylindrical three-dimensional …

Hamiltonian Analysis Of Electron Self-Injection And Acceleration Into An Evolving Plasma Bubble, Sunghwan A. Yi, Vladimir N. Khudik, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Gennady Shvets

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Injection and acceleration of the background plasma electrons in laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) operated in the blowout (‘bubble’) regime are analysed. Using a model of a slowly expanding spherical plasma bubble propagating with an ultra-relativistic speed, we derive a sufficient condition for the electron injection: the change in the electron’s Hamiltonian in the co-moving with the bubble reference frame must exceed its rest mass energy m_{e}c^2. We demonstrate the existence of the minimal expansion rate of the bubble needed for electron injection. We demonstrate that if the bubble’s expansion is followed by its stabilization or contraction, then a quasi-monoenergetic electron …

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 …

Holographic Visualization Of Laser Wakefields, Peng Dong, Steven A. Reed, Sunghwan A. Yi, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Zhengyan Y. Li, Gennady Shvets, Nicholas H. Matlis, Christopher Mcguffey, Stepan S. Bulanov, Vladimir Chvykov, Galina Kalintchenko, Karl Krushelnick, Anatoly Maksimchuk, Takeshi Matsuoka, Alexander G. R. Thomas, Victor Yanovsky, Michael C. Downer

Serge Youri Kalmykov

We report ‘snapshots’ of laser-generated plasma accelerator structures acquired by frequency domain holography (FDH) and frequency domain shadowgraphy (FDS), techniques for visualizing quasi-static objects propagating near the speed of light. FDH captures images of sinusoidal wakes in mm-length plasmas of density 1 < n_{e} < 5 x 10^{18} cm^{−3} from phase modulations they imprint on co-propagating probe pulses. Changes in the wake structure (such as the curvature of the wavefront), caused by the laser and plasma parameter variations from shot to shot, were observed. FDS visualizes lasergenerated electron density bubbles in mm-length plasmas of density n_{e} > 10^{19} cm^{−3} using amplitude modulations they imprint on co-propagating probe pulses. Variations in the spatio-temporal structure of bubbles are inferred from corresponding variations in the shape of ‘bullets’ of probe light trapped inside them and correlated with mono-energetic electron generation. Both FDH and FDS average over structural variations that occur during propagation through the plasma medium. We explore …

Formation Of Optical Bullets In Laser-Driven Plasma Bubble Accelerators, Peng Dong, Steven A. Reed, Sunghwan A. Yi, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Gennady Shvets, Michael C. Downer, Nicholas H. Matlis, Wim P. Leemans, Christopher Mcguffey, Stepan S. Bulanov, Vladimir Chvykov, Galina Kalintchenko, Karl Krushelnick, Anatoly Maksimchuk, Takeshi Matsuoka, Alexander G. R. Thomas, Victor Yanovsky

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Electron density bubbles—wake structures generated in plasma of density n_{e} ~ 10^{19} cm^{-3} by the light pressure of intense ultrashort laser pulses—are shown to reshape weak copropagating probe pulses into optical ‘‘bullets.’’ The bullets are reconstructed using frequency-domain interferometric techniques in order to visualize bubble formation. Bullets are confined in three dimensions to plasma-wavelength size, and exhibit higher intensity, broader spectrum and flatter temporal phase than surrounding probe light, evidence of their compression by the bubble. Bullets observed at 0.8 < n_{e} < 1.2 x 10^{19} cm^{-3} provide the first observation of bubble formation below the electron capture threshold. At higher n_{e}, bullets appear with high shot-to-shot stability together with relativistic electrons that vary widely in spectrum, and help relate bubble formation to fast electron generation.

Electron Self-Injection And Trapping Into An Evolving Plasma Bubble, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Sunghwan A. Yi, Vladimir N. Khudik, Gennady Shvets

Serge Youri Kalmykov

The blowout (or bubble) regime of laser wakefield acceleration is promising for generating monochromatic high-energy electron beams out of low-density plasmas. It is shown analytically and by particle-in-cell simulations that self-injection of the background plasma electrons into the quasistatic plasma bubble can be caused by slow temporal expansion of the bubble. Sufficient criteria for the electron trapping and bubble’s expansion rate are derived using a semianalytic nonstationary Hamiltonian theory. It is further shown that the combination of bubble’s expansion and contraction results in monoenergetic electron beams.

Studies Of Laser Wakefield Structures And Electron Acceleration In Underdense Plasmas, Anatoly Maksimchuk, Steven A. Reed, Stepan S. Bulanov, Vladimir Chvykov, Galina Kalintchenko, Takeshi Matsuoka, Christopher Mcguffey, Gerard Mourou, Natalia Naumova, John Nees, Pascal Rousseau, Victor Yanovsky, Karl Krushelnick, Nicholas H. Matlis, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Gennady Shvets, Michael C. Downer, C. R. Vane, J. R. Beene, Daniel W. Stracener, David R. Schultz

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Experiments on electron acceleration and optical diagnostics of laser wakes were performed on the HERCULES facility in a wide range of laser and plasma parameters. Using frequency domain holography we demonstrated single shot visualization of individual plasma waves, produced by 40 TW, 30 fs laser pulses focused to the intensity of 10^{19} W/cm^2 onto a supersonic He gas jet with plasma densities n_e ~ 10^{19} cm^{−3}. These holographic “snapshots” capture the variation in shape of the plasma wave with distance behind the driver, and resolve wave front curvature seen previously only in simulations. High-energy quasimonoenergetic electron beams were generated using …

Injection, Trapping, And Acceleration Of Electrons In A Three-Dimensional Nonlinear Laser Wakefield, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Leonid M. Gorbunov, Patrick Mora, Gennady Shvets

Serge Youri Kalmykov

It is demonstrated that the accelerating and focusing phases of the nonlinear three-dimensional axisymmetric laser wake can almost entirely overlap starting from a certain distance behind the laser pulse in homogeneous plasma. Such field structure results from the curvature of phase fronts due to the radially inhomogeneous relativistic shift of plasma frequency. Consequently, the number of trapped low-energy electrons can be much greater than that predicted by the linear wake theory. This effect is favorable for quasi-monoenergetic acceleration of a considerable charge (several hundreds of pC) to about 1 GeV per electron in the plasma wakefield driven by an ultrashort …

Snapshots Of Laser Wakefields, Nicholas H. Matlis, Steven A. Reed, Stepan S. Bulanov, Vladimir Chvykov, Galina Kalintchenko, Takeshi Matsuoka, Pascal Rousseau, Victor Yanovsky, Anatoly Maksimchuk, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Gennady Shvets, Michael C. Downer

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Tabletop plasma accelerators can now produce GeV-range electron beams and femtosecond X-ray pulses, providing compact radiation sources for medicine, nuclear engineering, materials science and high-energy physics. In these accelerators, electrons surf on electric fields exceeding 100 GeV m^{−1}, which is more than 1,000 times stronger than achievable in conventional accelerators. These fields are generated within plasma structures (such as Langmuir waves or electron density ‘bubbles’) propagating near light speed behind laser or charged-particle driving pulses. Here, we demonstrate single-shot visualization of laser-wakefield accelerator structures for the first time. Our ‘snapshots’ capture the evolution of multiple wake periods, detect structure variations …

Laser Wakefield Acceleration By Petawatt Ultrashort Laser Pulses, Leonid M. Gorbunov, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Patrick Mora

Serge Youri Kalmykov

An ultrashort (about 30 fs) petawatt laser pulse focused with a wide focal spot (about 100 mm) in a rarefied plasma (n_0 ~ 10^{17} cm^{−3}) excites a nonlinear plasma wakefield which can accelerate injected electrons up to GeV energies without any pulse channeling. Under these conditions, propagation of the laser pulse with an overcritical power for relativistic self-focusing is almost the same as in vacuum. The nonlinear quasiplane plasma wave, whose amplitude and phase velocity vary along the laser path, effectively traps and accelerates injected electrons with a wide range of initial energies. Electrons accelerated over two Rayleigh lengths (about …