Department of Physics and Astronomy: Publications and Other Research

 

Date of this Version

2013

Citation

Phys. Rev. ST Accel Beams 16, 031302 (2013).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.16.031302

Comments

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Abstract

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 focus of the laser pulse within the plasma suppresses continuous injection, thus reducing the low-energy tail of the electron beam.

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