Measurements of the critical power for self-injection of electrons in a laser wakefield accelerator

A laser wakefield acceleration study has been performed in the matched, self-guided, blowout regime producing 720 +/- 50 MeV quasimonoenergetic electrons with a divergence Deltatheta_{FWHM} of 2.85 +/- 0.15 mrad using a 10 J, 60 fs 0.8 microm laser. While maintaining a nearly constant plasma density...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2009-11, Vol.103 (21), p.215006-215006, Article 215006
Main Authors: Froula, D H, Clayton, C E, Döppner, T, Marsh, K A, Barty, C P J, Divol, L, Fonseca, R A, Glenzer, S H, Joshi, C, Lu, W, Martins, S F, Michel, P, Mori, W B, Palastro, J P, Pollock, B B, Pak, A, Ralph, J E, Ross, J S, Siders, C W, Silva, L O, Wang, T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION
ACCELERATION
ELECTRONS
LASERS
PLASMA
PLASMA DENSITY
WAKEFIELD ACCELERATORS
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Summary:A laser wakefield acceleration study has been performed in the matched, self-guided, blowout regime producing 720 +/- 50 MeV quasimonoenergetic electrons with a divergence Deltatheta_{FWHM} of 2.85 +/- 0.15 mrad using a 10 J, 60 fs 0.8 microm laser. While maintaining a nearly constant plasma density (3 x 10{18} cm{-3}), the energy gain increased from 75 to 720 MeV when the plasma length was increased from 3 to 8 mm. Absolute charge measurements indicate that self-injection of electrons occurs when the laser power P exceeds 3 times the critical power P{cr} for relativistic self-focusing and saturates around 100 pC for P/P{cr} > 5. The results are compared with both analytical scalings and full 3D particle-in-cell simulations.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.103.215006