Abstract Details
Laser wakefield electron acceleration on the Texas Petawatt facility: towards GeV electron energy in a single non-guided stage
Author: Serguei Y. Kalmykov
Requested Type: Oral Only
Submitted: 2009-04-21 12:09:10
Co-authors: S. A. Yi, V. Khudik, G. Shvets, S. A. Reed, Peng Dong, M. C. Downer, T. Ditmire
Contact Info:
The University of Texas at Austin
One University Station, C1500
Austin, Texas 78712
USA
Abstract Text:
Laser wakefield acceleration experiments with the Texas Petawatt (TPW) laser will be carried out in a unique regime with the laser pulse duration ~ 150 fs, the shortest among the available PW facilities. Focusing the 1.33 PW pulse to the peak intensity > 10^19 W/cm^2 will produce multi-GeV electron bunch from a few centimeter long low-density He gas cell. The experiment relies on self-guiding the TPW pulse over many centimeters of uniform plasmas via the combination of nonlinear plasma wave focusing, relativistic self-focusing, phase self-modulation, and subsequent temporal compression. Although the pulse is remarkably stable against the relativistic filamentation, high quality of electron bunch requires the absence of pronounced hot spots. Self-injection of electrons from rarefied ambient plasmas (> 2.5 10^17 cm^-3) is caused by the first wake bucket (electron “bubble”) evolution in the course of the laser propagation. In very rare plasmas (~ 10^17 cm^-3), the laser pulse focusing and electron self-injection can be enforced by using a dense plasma slab as a thin lens. Laser pulse dynamics is studied using reduced particle-in-cell (PIC) modeling via 3D (with axial symmetry) fully relativistic, time-averaged (over laser period), quasi-static code WAKE. Fully 3D non-averaged relativistic test particle procedure models self-injection in the WAKE simulations. Results on the electron injection are verified in the fully self-consistent 2D PIC simulations with the Virtual Laser Plasma Lab (VLPL) code. Quasi-monoenergetic electron acceleration up to 3-6 GeV is predicted.
Comments: