Plasma and Beam Physics Commons^™

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. …