Observation of Laser Power Amplification in a Self-Injecting Laser Wakefield Accelerator

Abstract

We report on the depletion and power amplification of the driving laser pulse in a strongly-driven laser wakefield accelerator. Simultaneous measurement of the transmitted pulse energy and temporal shape indicate an increase in peak power from $187\pm 11$ TW to a maximum of $318\pm 12$ TW after 13 mm of propagation in plasma density of $0.9\times 10^{18}$ cm${}^{-3}$. The power amplification is correlated with the injection and acceleration of electrons in the nonlinear wakefield. This process is modeled by including localized redshift and subsequent group delay dispersion at the laser pulse front.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures. Published in PRL

References in corpus (5)

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• Enhancement of electron energy to multi-GeV regime by a dual-stage laser-wakefield accelerator pumped by petawatt laser pulses
• Ultra-high brilliance multi-MeV $\gamma$-ray beam from non-linear Thomson scattering
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