Measurement of Magnetic-Field Structures in a Laser-Wakefield Accelerator

Abstract

Experimental measurements of magnetic fields generated in the cavity of a self-injecting laser-wakefield accelerator are presented. Faraday rotation is used to determine the existence of multi-megagauss fields, constrained to a transverse dimension comparable to the plasma wavelength and several plasma wavelengths longitudinally. The fields are generated rapidly and move with the driving laser. In our experiment, the appearance of the magnetic fields is correlated to the production of relativistic electrons, indicating that they are inherently tied to the growth and wavebreaking of the nonlinear plasma wave. This evolution is confirmed by numerical simulations, showing that these measurements provide insight into the wakefield evolution with high spatial and temporal resolution.

References in corpus (1)

• The Effect of Laser Focusing Conditions on Propagation and Monoenergetic Electron Production in Laser Wakefield Accelerators

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• Characterization and Application of Hard X-Ray Betatron Radiation Generated by Relativistic Electrons from a Laser-Wakefield Accelerator
• Modeling ultrafast shadowgraphy in laser-plasma interaction experiments
• Probing electron acceleration and X-ray emission in laser-plasma accelerator
• Faraday rotation study of plasma bubbles in GeV wakefield accelerators