Publikationsrepositorium - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

Laser wakefield accelerators have the capability to produce few-femtosecond, high charge and high peak current beams in the GeV energy range within only a few centimeters of acceleration length. The unique beam properties from these novel concept accelerators can be employed to explore new concepts such as beam driven plasma acceleration or driving superradiant light sources, which require peak currents beyond those found in current conventional accelerators.
Here, we report on robust generation of high quality electron beams at unprecedented high peak currents. The self-truncated ionization injection scheme is employed, enabling a precise control over the amount of injected electrons with charges up to 0.5 nC (FWHM) at a quasi-monoenergetic peak. Minimization of energy spread is reached by optimizing the beam loading condition1,2. An ultrafast single-shot electron beam diagnostic based on Coherent Optical Transition Radiation reveals ~10 femtosecond bunch lengths yielding peak currents of over 10 kA. Such peak currents are one to two orders of magnitude larger than those found in conventional RF accelerators. Control of the energy spread of LWFA beams with the beam loading condition together with the scaling to high peak currents paves the road for driving superradiant lights sources and enables the first proof-of-principle experiment of a hybrid laser- to beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator in an effort to further improve beam quality found in plasma accelerators.

1 J.P. Couperus et al., “Demonstration of a beam loaded nanocoulomb-class laser wakefield accelerator”, Nature Communication, 8, 487 (2017)
2 A. Irman et al., “Improved performance of laser wakefield acceleration by tailored self-truncation ionization injection”, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 60, 044015 (2018)