Demonstration of a compact plasma accelerator powered by laser-accelerated electron beams

Abstract

Plasma wakefield accelerators are capable of sustaining gigavolt-per-centimeter accelerating fields, surpassing the electric breakdown threshold in state-of-the-art accelerator modules by 3-4 orders of magnitude. Beam-driven wakefields offer particularly attractive conditions for the generation and acceleration of high-quality beams. However, this scheme relies on kilometer-scale accelerators. Here, we report on the demonstration of a millimeter-scale plasma accelerator powered by laser-accelerated electron beams. We showcase the acceleration of electron beams to 130 MeV, consistent with simulations exhibiting accelerating gradients exceeding 100 GV/m. This miniaturized accelerator is further explored by employing a controlled pair of drive and witness electron bunches, where a fraction of the driver energy is transferred to the accelerated witness through the plasma. Such a hybrid approach allows fundamental studies of beam-driven plasma accelerator concepts at widely accessible high-power laser facilities. It is anticipated to provide compact sources of energetic high-brightness electron beams for quality-demanding applications such as free-electron lasers.

References in corpus (16)

• A spectral, quasi-cylindrical and dispersion-free Particle-In-Cell algorithm
• Beam loading in the nonlinear regime of plasma-based acceleration
• Design considerations for table-top, laser-based VUV and X-ray free electron lasers
• Exact field ionization rates in the barrier suppression-regime from numerical TDSE calculations
• Generation of High Brightness Electron Beams via Ionization Induced Injection by Transverse Colliding Lasers in a Beam-Driven Plasma Wakefield Accelerator
• Mitigation of the hose instability in plasma-wakefield accelerators
• Self-truncated ionization injection and consequent monoenergetic electron bunches in laser wakefield acceleration
• High-Quality Electron Beams from Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators by Wakefield-Induced Ionization Injection
• Direct observation of plasma waves and dynamics induced by laser-accelerated electron beams
• Dual-energy electron beams from a compact laser-driven accelerator
• Mapping the X-Ray Emission Region in a Laser-Plasma Accelerator
• GeV electrons due to a transition from laser wakefield acceleration to plasma wakefield acceleration
• Probing Ultrafast Magnetic-Field Generation by Current Filamentation Instability in Femtosecond Relativistic Laser-Matter Interactions
• Intrinsic Stabilization of the Drive Beam in Plasma Wakefield Accelerators
• Wakefield-Induced Ionization injection in beam-driven plasma accelerators
• Hybrid LWFA $|$ PWFA Staging as a Beam Energy and Brightness Transformer : Conceptual Design and Simulations

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Stable and high quality electron beams from staged laser and plasma wakefield accelerators
• Generation and acceleration of high brightness electrons beams bunched at X-ray wavelengths using plasma-based acceleration
• Attosecond-Angstrom free-electron-laser towards the cold beam limit
• Ultrarelativistic electron beams accelerated by terawatt scalable kHz laser
• Control of electron beam current, charge and energy spread using density downramp injection in laser wakefield accelerators
• Bayesian optimization of electron energy from laser wakefield accelerators
• Restoring betatron phase coherence in a beam-loaded laser-wakefield accelerator
• Laser-Plasma Ion Beam Booster Based on Hollow-Channel Magnetic Vortex Acceleration
• On the effect of the maximal proper acceleration in the inertia
• EZ: An Efficient, Charge Conserving Current Deposition Algorithm for Electromagnetic Particle-In-Cell Simulations
• Beam current from downramp injection in electron-driven plasma wakefields
• On the Unruh effect for hyperbolic observers in spacetimes of maximal proper acceleration
• High brightness, symmetric electron bunch generation in a plasma wakefield accelerator via a radially-polarized plasma photocathode