Laser wakefield acceleration by petawatt ultrashort laser pulses

Journal Article · Tue Dec 07 00:00:00 EST 2004 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1842619· OSTI ID:20655281

Gorbunov, L M ^[1]; Kalmykov, S Yu ^[2]; Mora, P ^[3]

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1. P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskii prospect 53, Moscow 119991 (Russian Federation)
2. Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712 (United States)
3. Centre de Physique Theorique (UMR 7644 du CNRS), Ecole polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau (France)

An ultra-short (about 30 fs) petawatt laser pulse focused in a wide focal spot (about 100{mu}m) in rarefied plasma (n0 {approx} 1017cm-3) excites a nonlinear plasma wakefield which can accelerate injected electrons up to a GeV energy without pulse channelling. In these conditions, the laser pulse with an over-critical power for relativistic self-focusing propagates as in vacuum. The nonlinear quasi-plane wake plasma wave, whose amplitude and phase velocity vary along the laser path, effectively traps and accelerates injected electrons with a wide range of initial energies. Electrons accelerated along two Rayleigh lengths (about eight centimeters) gain the energy up to 1 GeV. In particular, the electrons trapped from quite a long ({tau}b {approx} 330 fs) non-resonant electron beamlet of 1 MeV particles eventually form a low emittance bunch with the energies in the range 900 {+-} 50 MeV. All these conclusions follow from the two-dimensional simulations performed in cylindrical geometry by fully relativistic time-averaged particle code WAKE.

• OSTI ID: 20655281
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 737, Issue 1; Conference: 11. advanced accelerator concepts workshop, Stony Brook, NY (United States), 21-26 Jun 2004; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.1842619; (c) 2004 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
ACCELERATION
CHANNELING
CYLINDRICAL CONFIGURATION
ELECTRON BEAMS
FOCUSING
GEOMETRY
LASERS
MEV RANGE 100-1000
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PETAWATT POWER RANGE
PHASE VELOCITY
PLASMA
PLASMA HEATING
PLASMA SIMULATION
PLASMA WAVES
PULSES
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
TRAPPING
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
WAKEFIELD ACCELERATORS