Control of electron beam polarization in the bubble regime of laser-wakefield acceleration

Abstract

Electron beam polarization in the bubble regime of the interaction between a high-intensity laser and a longitudinally pre-polarized plasma is investigated by means of the Thomas-Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation. Using a test-particle model, the dependence of the accelerated electron polarization on the bubble geometry is analyzed in detail. Tracking the polarization dynamics of individual electrons reveals that although the spin direction changes during both the self-injection process and acceleration phase, the former has the biggest impact. For nearly spherical bubbles, the polarization of electron beam persists after capture and acceleration in the bubble. By contrast, for aspherical bubble shapes, the electron beam becomes rapidly depolarized, and the net polarization direction can even reverse in the case of a oblate spheroidal bubble. These findings are confirmed via particle-in-cell simulations.

8pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (8)

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• Scaling laws for the (de-)polarization time of relativistic particle beams in strong fields
• Generation of polarized particle beams at relativistic laser intensities
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• Polarized proton acceleration in ultra-intense laser interaction with near critical density plasmas
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spin-polarized electron beam generation in the colliding-pulse injection scheme
• Colliding Pulse Injection of Polarized Electron Bunches in a Laser-Plasma Accelerator
• Generation of polarized electron beams through self-injection in the interaction of a laser with a pre-polarized plasma
• Plasma acceleration of polarized particle beams