Laser wakefield acceleration with mid-IR laser pulses

Abstract

We report on the first results of laser plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultrashort mid-infrared laser pulses (λ= 3.9 μm, 100 fs, 0.25 TW), which enable near- and above-critical density interactions with moderate-density gas jets. Relativistic electron acceleration up to ~12 MeV occurs when the jet width exceeds the threshold scale length for relativistic self-focusing. We present scaling trends in the accelerated beam profiles, charge and spectra, which are supported by particle-in-cell simulations and time-resolved images of the interaction. For similarly scaled conditions, we observe significant increases in accelerated charge compared to previous experiments with near-infrared (λ=800 nm) pulses.

References in corpus (4)

• Bright Coherent Ultrahigh Harmonics in the keV X-Ray Regime from Mid-Infrared Femtosecond Lasers
• Terawatt-level few-cycle mid-IR pulses through nonlinear self-compression in bulk
• Multi-MeV electron acceleration by sub-terawatt laser pulses
• Short Intense Laser Pulse Collapse in Near-Critical Plasma

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