Cold optical injection producing monoenergetic, multi-GeV electron bunches

A cold optical injection mechanism for a laser-plasma accelerator is described. It relies on a short, circularly polarized, low-energy laser pulse counterpropagating to and colliding with a circularly polarized main pulse in a low density plasma. Contrary to previously published optical injection sc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2009-02, Vol.102 (6), p.065001-065001, Article 065001
Main Authors: Davoine, X, Lefebvre, E, Rechatin, C, Faure, J, Malka, V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ACCELERATION
BEAM BUNCHING
BEAM INJECTION
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
ELECTRON BEAMS
GEV RANGE 01-10
Optics
PERIODICITY
Physics
PLASMA
PLASMA DENSITY
PLASMA GUNS
PULSES
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Summary:A cold optical injection mechanism for a laser-plasma accelerator is described. It relies on a short, circularly polarized, low-energy laser pulse counterpropagating to and colliding with a circularly polarized main pulse in a low density plasma. Contrary to previously published optical injection schemes, injection is not caused here by electron heating. Instead, the collision between the pulses creates a spatially periodic and time-independent beat force. This force can block the longitudinal electron motion, leading to their entry and injection into the propagating wake. In a specific setup, we compute after acceleration over 0.6 mm, a 60 MeV, 50 pC electron bunch with 0.7 MeV rms energy spread, proving the interest of this scheme to inject electron bunches with a narrow absolute energy spread. Acceleration to 3 GeV with a rms spread smaller than 1% is computed after propagation over 3.8 cm in a plasma channel.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.102.065001