Laser Wakefield Acceleration: A path to creating 100 GeV electron beams on a tabletop
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (United States)
The extraordinary ability of space-charge waves in plasmas to accelerate charged particles at gradients that are orders of magnitude greater than in current accelerators has been well documented. We show here that 100 TW to 2000 TW class lasers can excite large amplitude wakefields and be stably self-guided in very underdense plasmas to produce 1 to 10 GeV mono-energetic, self-injected electron beams with nC of charge. For such powers the plasma wakes can be excited by the nearly complete blowout, i.e., expulsion, of plasma electrons by the radiation pressure of a short pulse laser. We also show that these wakefields are ideal for accelerating externally injected beams of electrons. The proposed regime is distinct from the ''bubble regime'' in that it advocates using lower densities and wider spot sizes while keeping the intensity relatively constant in order to increase the output electron beam energy and keep the efficiency high. We discuss what laser parameters would be needed to generate 100 GeV beams with more than a nC of charge in a single stage in this LWFA regime. Our theoretical results are verified by three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.
- OSTI ID:
- 21064163
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 926, Issue 1; Conference: 15. international conference on atomic processes in plasmas, Gaithersburg, MD (United States), 19-22 Mar 2007; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2768848; (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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