The acceleration of a high-charge electron bunch to 10 GeV in a 10-cm nanoparticle-assisted wakefield accelerator
Constantin Aniculaesei, Thanh Ha, Samuel R. Yoffe, Lance Labun, Stephen Milton, E. McCary, M. Spinks, Hernan Quevedo, Ou Z. Labun, Ritwik Sain, Andrea Hannasch, Rafal Zgadzaj, Isabella Pagano, Jose A. Franco-Altamirano, Martin L. Ringuette, Erhart Gaul, Scott V. Luedtke, Ganesh Tiwari, Bernhard Ersfeld, E. Brunetti, H. Rühl, T. Ditmire, Sandra Bruce, Michael E. Donovan, M. C. Downer, D. A. Jaroszynski, B. M. Hegelich
Abstract
An intense laser pulse focused onto a plasma can excite nonlinear plasma waves. Under appropriate conditions, electrons from the background plasma are trapped in the plasma wave and accelerated to ultra-relativistic velocities. This scheme is called a laser wakefield accelerator. In this work, we present results from a laser wakefield acceleration experiment using a petawatt-class laser to excite the wakefields as well as nanoparticles to assist the injection of electrons into the accelerating phase of the wakefields. We find that a 10-cm-long, nanoparticle-assisted laser wakefield accelerator can generate 340 pC, 10 ± 1.86 GeV electron bunches with a 3.4 GeV rms convolved energy spread and a 0.9 mrad rms divergence. It can also produce bunches with lower energies in the 4–6 GeV range.