Benchmarking of hydrodynamic plasma waveguides for multi-GeV laser-driven electron acceleration

Abstract

Hydrodynamic plasma waveguides initiated by optical field ionization (OFI) have recently become a key component of multi-GeV laser wakefield accelerators. Here, we present the most complete and accurate experimental and simulation-based characterization to date, applicable both to current multi-GeV experiments and future 100 GeV-scale laser plasma accelerators. Crucial to the simulations is the correct modeling of intense Bessel beam interaction with meter-scale gas targets, the results of which are used as initial conditions for hydrodynamic simulations. The simulations are in good agreement with our experiments measuring evolving plasma and neutral hydrogen density profiles using two-color short pulse interferometry, enabling realistic determination of the guided mode structure for application to laser-driven plasma accelerator design.

References in corpus (12)

• Generating multi-GeV electron bunches using single stage laser wakefield acceleration in a 3D nonlinear regime
• Femtosecond x rays from laser-plasma accelerators
• Strong Field Ionization Rate for Arbitrary Laser Frequencies
• Optical guiding in meter-scale plasma waveguides
• Meter-Scale, Conditioned Hydrodynamic Optical-Field-Ionized Plasma Channels
• Self-waveguiding of relativistic laser pulses in neutral gas channel
• H2 Double Ionization with Few-Cycle Laser Pulses
• Guiding of high-intensity laser pulses in 100mm-long hydrodynamic optical-field-ionized plasma channels
• All-optical GeV electron bunch generation in a laser-plasma accelerator via truncated-channel injection
• Phase front retrieval and correction of Bessel beams
• Strong Field Non-Franck-Condon Ionization of H${}_2$: A Semi-Classical Analysis
• Electro-nuclear dynamics of single and double ionization of H${}_2$ in ultrafast intense laser pulses

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Scaling Laws in Plasma Channels for Laser Wakefield Accelerators