Parametric study of transport beam lines for electron beams accelerated by laser-plasma interaction

Journal Article · Mon Mar 07 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Applied Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4942626· OSTI ID:22597020

Scisciò, M.; Lancia, L.; Migliorati, M.; Mostacci, A.; Palumbo, L. ^[1]; Papaphilippou, Y. ^[2]

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1. INFN-RM1 and SBAI, Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” Via Scarpa 16, 00161 Roma (Italy)
2. CERN, CH 1211 Geneva 23 (Switzerland)

In the last decade, laser-plasma acceleration of high-energy electrons has attracted strong attention in different fields. Electrons with maximum energies in the GeV range can be laser-accelerated within a few cm using multi-hundreds terawatt (TW) lasers, yielding to very high beam currents at the source (electron bunches with up to tens-hundreds of pC in a few fs). While initially the challenge was to increase the maximum achievable electron energy, today strong effort is put in the control and usability of these laser-generated beams that still lack of some features in order to be used for applications where currently conventional, radio-frequency (RF) based, electron beam lines represent the most common and efficient solution. Several improvements have been suggested for this purpose, some of them acting directly on the plasma source, some using beam shaping tools located downstream. Concerning the latter, several studies have suggested the use of conventional accelerator magnetic devices (such as quadrupoles and solenoids) as an easy implementable solution when the laser-plasma accelerated beam requires optimization. In this paper, we report on a parametric study related to the transport of electron beams accelerated by laser-plasma interaction, using conventional accelerator elements and tools. We focus on both, high energy electron beams in the GeV range, as produced on petawatt (PW) class laser systems, and on lower energy electron beams in the hundreds of MeV range, as nowadays routinely obtained on commercially available multi-hundred TW laser systems. For both scenarios, our study allows understanding what are the crucial parameters that enable laser-plasma accelerators to compete with conventional ones and allow for a beam transport. We show that suitable working points require a tradeoff-combination between low beam divergence and narrow energy spread.

• OSTI ID: 22597020
• Journal Information: Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 119, Issue 9; Other Information: (c) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
ACCELERATORS
BEAM CURRENTS
BEAM SHAPING
BEAM TRANSPORT
ELECTRON BEAMS
ELECTRONS
GEV RANGE
LASER-PRODUCED PLASMA
LASERS
MEV RANGE
PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS
PLASMA ACCELERATION
PLASMA GUNS
QUADRUPOLES
RADIOWAVE RADIATION
SOLENOIDS