Plasma acceleration
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Multistage coupling of independent laser-plasma accelerators Open
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) are capable of accelerating charged particles to very high energies in very compact structures. In theory, therefore, they offer advantages over conventional, large-scale particle accelerators. However, the…
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Applications of laser wakefield accelerator-based light sources Open
Laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) were proposed more than three decades ago, and while they promise to deliver compact, high energy particle accelerators, they will also provide the scientific community with novel light sources. In a LW…
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Diagnostics for plasma-based electron accelerators Open
Plasma-based electron accelerators rely on excitation of light-speed plasma density waves and associated ultrahigh electric fields to accelerate electrons to ultrarelativistic energy. Intrinsic time and length scales of these plasma waves …
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Decoding Sources of Energy Variability in a Laser-Plasma Accelerator Open
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The role of three-dimensional transport in driving enhanced electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection Open
Magnetic reconnection is an important driver of energetic particles in many astrophysical phenomena. Using kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we explore the impact of three-dimensional reconnection dynamics on the efficiency of particle…
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Bayesian Optimization of a Laser-Plasma Accelerator Open
Generating high-quality laser-plasma accelerated electron beams requires carefully balancing a plethora of physical effects and is therefore challenging-both conceptually and in experiments. Here, we use Bayesian optimization of key laser …
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Automation and control of laser wakefield accelerators using Bayesian optimization Open
Laser wakefield accelerators promise to revolutionize many areas of accelerator science. However, one of the greatest challenges to their widespread adoption is the difficulty in control and optimization of the accelerator outputs due to c…
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Optical Control of the Topology of Laser-Plasma Accelerators Open
We propose a twisted plasma accelerator capable of generating relativistic electron vortex beams with helical current profiles. The angular momentum of these vortex bunches is quantized, dominates their transverse motion, and results in sp…
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Optimal Beam Loading in a Laser-Plasma Accelerator Open
Applications of laser-plasma accelerators demand low energy spread beams and high-efficiency operation. Achieving both requires flattening the accelerating fields by controlled beam loading of the plasma wave. Here, we optimize the generat…
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Plasma wakefield acceleration experiments at FACET II Open
During the past two decades of research, the ultra-relativistic beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) concept has achieved many significant milestones. These include the demonstration of ultra-high gradient acceleration of electr…
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Demonstration of acceleration of relativistic electrons at a dielectric microstructure using femtosecond laser pulses Open
Acceleration of electrons using laser-driven dielectric microstructures is a promising technology for the miniaturization of particle accelerators. Achieving the desired GV m-1 accelerating gradients is possible only with laser pulse durat…
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Stable multi-GeV electron accelerator driven by waveform-controlled PW laser pulses Open
The achievable energy and the stability of accelerated electron beams have been the most critical issues in laser wakefield acceleration. As laser propagation, plasma wave formation and electron acceleration are highly nonlinear processes,…
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Perspectives on the generation of electron beams from plasma-based accelerators and their near and long term applications Open
This article first gives the authors' perspectives on how the field of plasma-based acceleration (PBA) developed and how the current experiments, theory, and simulations are motivated by long term applications of PBA to a future linear col…
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Multistage Coupling of Laser-Wakefield Accelerators with Curved Plasma Channels Open
Multistage coupling of laser-wakefield accelerators is essential to overcome laser energy depletion for high-energy applications such as TeV-level electron-positron colliders. Current staging schemes feed subsequent laser pulses into stage…
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Mitigation of the Hose Instability in Plasma-Wakefield Accelerators Open
Current models predict the hose instability to crucially limit the applicability of plasma-wakefield accelerators. By developing an analytical model which incorporates the evolution of the hose instability over long propagation distances, …
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Multi-GeV Electron Bunches from an All-Optical Laser Wakefield Accelerator Open
We present the first demonstration of multi-GeV laser wakefield acceleration in a fully optically formed plasma waveguide, with an acceleration gradient as high as 25 GeV/m . The guide was formed via self-waveguiding of 17 cm–3 . We find t…
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Polarized Laser-WakeField-Accelerated Kiloampere Electron Beams Open
High-flux polarized particle beams are of critical importance for the investigation of spin-dependent processes, such as in searches of physics beyond the standard model, as well as for scrutinizing the structure of solids and surfaces in …
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Laser wakefield acceleration with mid-IR laser pulses Open
We report on, to the best of our knowledge, the first results of laser plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultrashort mid-infrared (IR) laser pulses (λ=3.9 μm, 100 fs, 0.25 TW), which enable near- and above-critical density interaction…
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Horizon 2020 EuPRAXIA design study Open
The Horizon 2020 Project EuPRAXIA ("European Plasma Research Accelerator with eXcellence In Applications") is preparing a conceptual design report of a highly compact and cost-effective European facility with multi-GeV electron beams using…
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The acceleration of a high-charge electron bunch to 10 GeV in a 10-cm nanoparticle-assisted wakefield accelerator Open
An intense laser pulse focused onto a plasma can excite nonlinear plasma waves. Under appropriate conditions, electrons from the background plasma are trapped in the plasma wave and accelerated to ultra-relativistic velocities. This scheme…
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Energy-Spread Preservation and High Efficiency in a Plasma-Wakefield Accelerator Open
Energy-efficient plasma-wakefield acceleration of particle bunches with low energy spread is a promising path to realizing compact free-electron lasers and particle colliders. High efficiency and low energy spread can be achieved simultane…
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Observation of Betatron X-Ray Radiation in a Self-Modulated Laser Wakefield Accelerator Driven with Picosecond Laser Pulses Open
We investigate a new regime for betatron x-ray emission that utilizes kilojoule-class picosecond lasers to drive wakes in plasmas. When such laser pulses with intensities of ∼5×10^{18} W/cm^{2} are focused into plasmas with electron densit…
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Tunable Plasma-Based Energy Dechirper Open
A tunable plasma-based energy dechirper has been developed at FLASHForward to remove the correlated energy spread of a 681 MeV electron bunch. Through the interaction of the bunch with wakefields excited in plasma the projected energy spre…
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Circumventing the Dephasing and Depletion Limits of Laser-Wakefield Acceleration Open
Compact electron accelerators are paramount to next-generation synchrotron light sources and free-electron lasers, as well as for advanced accelerators at the TeV energy frontier. Recent progress in laser-plasma driven accelerators (LPA) h…
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Towards Attosecond High-Energy Electron Bunches: Controlling Self-Injection in Laser-Wakefield Accelerators Through Plasma-Density Modulation Open
Self-injection in a laser-plasma wakefield accelerator is usually achieved by increasing the laser intensity until the threshold for injection is exceeded. Alternatively, the velocity of the bubble accelerating structure can be controlled …
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Observation of High Transformer Ratio Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Open
Particle-beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) enables various novel high-gradient techniques for powering future compact light-source and high-energy physics applications. Here, a driving particle bunch excites a wakefield resp…
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Demonstration of a Compact Plasma Accelerator powered by Laser-Accelerated Electron Beams Open
Particle accelerators based on laser- or electron-driven plasma waves promise compact sources for relativistic electron bunches. Here, Kurz and Heinemann et al. demonstrate a hybrid two-stage configuration, combining the individual feature…
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AWAKE readiness for the study of the seeded self-modulation of a 400 GeV proton bunch Open
AWAKE is a proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment. We show that the experimental setup briefly described here is ready for systematic study of the seeded self-modulation of the 400 GeV proton bunch in the 10 m long rubidium…
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High-charge relativistic electron bunches from a kHz laser-plasma accelerator Open
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Acceleration and evolution of a hollow electron beam in wakefields driven by a Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulse Open
We show that a ring-shaped hollow electron beam can be injected and accelerated by using a Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulse and ionization-induced injection in a laser wakefield accelerator. The acceleration and evolution of such a hollow, re…