Quasi-phasematched laser wakefield acceleration

Abstract

The energy gain in laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) is ultimately limited by dephasing, occurring when accelerated electrons outrun the accelerating phase of the wakefield. We apply quasi-phasematching, enabled by axially modulated plasma channels, to overcome this limitation. By matching the modulation period to the dephasing length, a relativistic electron can undergo energy gain over several dephasing lengths. Theory and simulations are presented showing that at a weakly relativistic laser intensity, ~10^17 W/cm2, and millijoule level pulse energies, quasi-phasematched LWFA results in energy gains of 50 MeV larger than standard LWFA.

References in corpus (3)

• Generating multi-GeV electron bunches using single stage laser wakefield acceleration in a 3D nonlinear regime
• Enhancement of electron energy to multi-GeV regime by a dual-stage laser-wakefield accelerator pumped by petawatt laser pulses
• Pulsed Mid-infrared Radiation from Spectral Broadening in Laser Wakefield Simulations

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Plasma lenses for ultrashort multi-petawatt laser pulses
• Overcoming the dephasing limit in multiple-pulse laser wakefield acceleration
• Subcycle engineering of laser filamentation in gas by harmonic seeding
• Synchrotron radiation from a curved plasma channel laser wakefield accelerator