Temporal characterization of ultrashort linearly chirped electron bunches generated from a laser wakefield accelerator

Abstract

A new method for diagnosing the temporal characteristics of ultrashort electron bunches with linear energy chirp generated from a laser wakefield accelerator is described. When the ionization-injected bunch interacts with the back of the drive laser, it is deflected and stretched along the direction of the electric field of the laser. Upon exiting the plasma, if the bunch goes through a narrow slit in front of the dipole magnet that disperses the electrons in the plane of the laser polarization, it can form a series of bunchlets that have different energies but are separated by half a laser wavelength. Since only the electrons that are undeflected by the laser go through the slit, the energy spectrum of the bunch is modulated. By analyzing the modulated energy spectrum, the shots where the bunch has a linear energy chirp can be recognized. Consequently, the energy chirp and beam current profile of those bunches can be reconstructed. This method is demonstrated through particle-in-cell simulations and experiment.

arXiv comment7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Beam loading in the nonlinear regime of plasma-based acceleration
• Exact phase space matching for staging plasma and traditional accelerator components using longitudinally tailored plasma profiles
• Role of direct laser acceleration in energy gained by electrons in a laser wakefield accelerator with ionization injection

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