Quasi-monoenergetic Laser-Plasma Positron Accelerator using Particle-Shower Plasma-Wave interactions

Abstract

An all-optical centimeter-scale laser-plasma positron accelerator is modeled to produce quasi-monoenergetic beams with tunable ultra-relativistic energies. A new principle elucidated here describes the trapping of divergent positrons that are part of a laser-driven electromagnetic shower with a large energy spread and their acceleration into a quasi-monoenergetic positron beam in a laser-driven plasma wave. Proof of this principle using analysis and Particle-In-Cell simulations demonstrates that, under limits defined here, existing lasers can accelerate hundreds of MeV pC quasi-monoenergetic positron bunches. By providing an affordable alternative to kilometer-scale radio-frequency accelerators, this compact positron accelerator opens up new avenues of research.

submitted to Physical Review Letters, January 2018

References in corpus (3)

• Loading Relativistic Maxwell Distributions in Particle Simulations
• Non-linear Ion-Wake Excitation by the Time-Asymmetric Electron Wakefields of Intense Energy Sources with applications to the Crunch-in regime
• Anisotropic Jüttner (relativistic Boltzmann) distribution

Cited by in corpus (3)

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