Multi-chromatic narrow-energy-spread electron bunches from laser wakefield acceleration with dual-color lasers

A method based on laser wakefield acceleration with controlled ionization injection triggered by another frequency-tripled laser is proposed, which can produce electron bunches with low energy spread. As two color pulses co-propagate in the background plasma, the peak amplitude of the combined laser field is modulated in time and space during the laser propagation due to the plasma dispersion. Ionization injection occurs when the peak amplitude exceeds certain threshold. The threshold is exceeded for limited duration periodically at different propagation distances, leading to multiple ionization injections and separated electron bunches. The method is demonstrated through multi-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Such electron bunches may be used to generate multi-chromatic X-ray sources for a variety of applications.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures; accepted by PR

Towards an Advanced Linear International Collider

This document provides detailed information on the status of Advanced and Novel Accelerators techniques and describes the steps that need to be envisaged for their implementation in future accelerators, in particular for high energy physics applications. It complements the overview prepared for the update of the European Strategy for particle physics, and provides a detailed description of the field. The scientific priorities of the community are described for each technique of acceleration able to achieve accelerating gradient in the GeV range or above. ALEGRO working group leaders have coordinated the preparation of their working group contribution and contributed to editing the documents. The preparation of this document was coordinated by the Advanced LinEar collider study GROup, ALEGRO. The content was defined through discussions at the ALEGRO workshop in Oxford UK, March 2018, and an advanced draft was discussed during a one day meeting prior to the AAC workshop in Breckenridge, CO, USA, August 2018. This document was submitted as an addendum to the ALEGRO submission1 to the European Strategy for Particle Physics

High quality electron beam acceleration by ionization injection in laser wakefields with mid-infrared dual-color lasers

For the laser wakefield acceleration, suppression of beam energy spread while keeping sufficient charge is one of the key challenges. In order to achieve this, we propose bichromatic laser ionization injection with combined laser wavelengths of 2.4 μ m and 0.8 μ m for wakefield excitation and triggering electron injection via field ionization, respectively. A laser pulse at 2.4 μ m wavelength enables one to drive an intense acceleration structure with a relatively low laser power. To further reduce the requirement of laser power, we also propose to use carbon dioxide as the working gas medium, where carbon acts as the injection element. Our three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that electron beams at the GeV energy level with both low energy spreads (around 1%) and high charges (several tens of picocoulomb) can be obtained by the use of this scheme with laser peak power totaling sub-100 TW

Plasma wakefield accelerator driven coherent spontaneous emission from an energy chirped electron pulse

Plasma accelerators (Esaryet al2009Rev. Mod. Phys.811229) are a potentially important source of highenergy, low emittance electron beamswith high peak currents generated within a relatively short distance. As such, they may have an important application in the driving of coherent light sources such as the Free Electron Laser (FEL) which operate into the x-ray region (McNeil and Thompson 2010 Nat. Photon.4814–21). While novel plasma photocathodes (Hidding et al 2012 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108035001) may offer orders of magnitude improvement to the normalized emittance and brightness of electron beams compared to Radio Frequency-driven accelerators, a substantial challenge is the energy spread and chirp of beams, which can make FEL operation impossible. In this paper it is shown that such an energy-chirped, ultrahigh brightness electron beam, with dynamically evolving current profile due to ballistic bunching at moderate energies, can generate significant coherent radiation output via the process of Coherent Spontaneous Emission (CSE) (Campbell and McNeil 2012 Proc. FEL2012 (Nara, Japan)).While this CSE is seen to cause some FEL-induced electron bunching at the radiation wavelength, the dynamic evolution of the energy chirped pulse dampens out any high-gain FEL interaction. This work may offer the prospect of a future plasma driven FEL operating in the high-gain Self Amplified CSE mode

Downramp-assisted underdense photocathode electron bunch generation in plasma wakefield accelerators

It is shown that the requirements for high quality electron bunch generation and trapping from an underdense photocathode in plasma wakefield accelerators can be substantially relaxed through localizing it on a plasma density downramp. This depresses the phase velocity of the accelerating electric field until the generated electrons are in phase, allowing for trapping in shallow trapping potentials. As a consequence the underdense photocathode technique is applicable by a much larger number of accelerator facilities. Furthermore, dark current generation is effectively suppressed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Plasma accelerator-based ultrabright x-ray beams from ultrabright electron beams

We provide a pathway to compact ultrabright light sources, based on ultrabright, high energy electron beams emerging from a combination of plasma Wakefield acceleration and plasma photocathodes. While plasma acceleration is known to produce accelerating fields three or four orders of magnitude larger than conventional accelerators, the plasma photocathode allows production of electron beams three or four orders of magnitude brighter than conventional, and thus is suitable to unleash the full potential of plasma accelerators. In particular, this is the case for various types of light sources, which profit enormously from an increased electron beam brightness. Building on the recent first experimental demonstration of the plasma photocathode, in this work we discuss the prospects of plasma photocathodes for key photon source approaches such as x-ray free-electron lasers, betatron radiation, ion-channel lasers and inverse Compton scattering

iMPACT, undulator-based multi-bunch plasma accelerator

The accelerating gradient measured in laser or electron driven wakefield accelerators can be in the range of 10-100GV/m, which is 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than can be achieved by conventional RF-based particle accelerators. However, the beam quality preservation is still an important problem to be tackled to ensure the practicality of this technology. In this global picture, the main goals of this study are planning and coordinating a physics program, the so-called iMPACT, that addresses issues such as emittance growth mechanisms in the transverse and longitudinal planes through scattering from the plasma particles, minimisation of the energy spread and maximising the energy gain while benchmarking the milestones. In this paper, a summary and planning of the project is introduced and initial multi-bunch simulations were presented

Simulation study of a passive plasma beam dump using varying plasma density

A plasma beam dump uses the collective oscillations of plasma electrons to absorb the kinetic energy of a particle beam. In this paper, a modified passive plasma beam dump scheme is proposed using either a gradient or stepped plasma profile to maintain a higher decelerating gradient compared with a uniform plasma. The improvement is a result of the plasma wavelength change preventing the re-acceleration of low energy particles. Particle-in-cell simulation results show that both stepped and gradient plasma profiles can achieve improved energy loss compared with a uniform plasma for an electron bunch of parameters routinely achieved in laser wakefield acceleration

Electron beam manipulation, injection and acceleration in plasma wakefield accelerators by optically generated plasma density spikes

We discuss considerations regarding a novel and robust scheme for optically triggered electron bunch generation in plasma wakefield accelerators [1]. In this technique, a transversely propagating focused laser pulse ignites a quasi-stationary plasma column before the arrival of the plasma wake. This localized plasma density enhancement or optical "plasma torch" distorts the blowout during the arrival of the electron drive bunch and modifies the electron trajectories, resulting in controlled injection. By changing the gas density, and the laser pulse parameters such as beam waist and intensity, and by moving the focal point of the laser pulse, the shape of the plasma torch, and therefore the generated trailing beam, can be tuned easily. The proposed method is much more flexible and faster in generating gas density transitions when compared to hydrodynamics-based methods, and it accommodates experimentalists needs as it is a purely optical process and straightforward to implement