Petawatt-Laser-Driven Wakefield Acceleration Of Electrons To 2 Gev In 10(17)Cm(-3) Plasma

Date

2012-06

Authors

Wang, X.
Zgadzaj, R.
Fazel, N.
Yi, S. A.
Zhang, X.
Henderson, W.
Chang, Y. Y.
Korzekwa, R.
Tsai, H. E.
Pai, C. H.

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Abstract

Electron self-injection into a laser-plasma accelerator (LPA) driven by the Texas Petawatt (TPW) laser is reported at plasma densities 1.7 - 6.2 x 10(17) cm(-3). Energy and charge of the electron beam, ranging from 0.5 GeV to 2 GeV and tens to hundreds of pC, respectively, depended strongly on laser beam quality and plasma density. Angular beam divergence was consistently around 0.5 mrad (FWHM), while shot-to-shot pointing fluctuations were limited to +/- 1.4 mrad rms. Betatron x-rays with tens of keV photon energy are also clearly observed.

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Citation

X. Wang, R. Zgadzaj, N. Fazel, S. A. Yi, X. Zhang, W. Henderson, Y.-Y. Chang, R. Korzekwa, H.-E. Tsai, C.-H. Pai, Z. Li, H. Quevedo, G. Dyer, E. Gaul, M. Martinez, A. Bernstein, T. Borger, M. Spinks, M. Donovan, S. Y. Kalmykov, V. Khudik, G. Shvets, T. Ditmire, and M. C. Downer. AIP Conference Proceedings 1507, 341 (Jun., 2012); doi: 10.1063/1.4773719