554 research outputs found
Plasma wake inhibition at the collision of two laser pulses in an underdense plasma
An electron injector concept for laser-plasma accelerator was developed in
ref [1] and [2] ; it relies on the use of counter-propagating ultrashort laser
pulses. In [2], the scheme is as follows: the pump laser pulse generates a
large amplitude laser wakefield (plasma wave). The counter-propagating
injection pulse interferes with the pump laser pulse to generate a beatwave
pattern. The ponderomotive force of the beatwave is able to inject plasma
electrons into the wakefield. We have studied this injection scheme using 1D
Particle in Cell (PIC) simulations. The simulations reveal phenomena and
important physical processes that were not taken into account in previous
models. In particular, at the collision of the laser pulses, most plasma
electrons are trapped in the beatwave pattern and cannot contribute to the
collective oscillation supporting the plasma wave. At this point, the fluid
approximation fails and the plasma wake is strongly inhibited. Consequently,
the injected charge is reduced by one order of magnitude compared to the
predictions from previous models.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Concept of a laser-plasma based electron source for sub-10 fs electron diffraction
We propose a new concept of an electron source for ultrafast electron
diffraction with sub-10~fs temporal resolution. Electrons are generated in a
laser-plasma accelerator, able to deliver femtosecond electron bunches at 5 MeV
energy with kHz repetition rate. The possibility of producing this electron
source is demonstrated using Particle-In-Cell simulations. We then use particle
tracking simulations to show that this electron beam can be transported and
manipulated in a realistic beamline, in order to reach parameters suitable for
electron diffraction. The beamline consists of realistic static magnetic optics
and introduces no temporal jitter. We demonstrate numerically that electron
bunches with 5~fs duration and containing 1.5~fC per bunch can be produced,
with a transverse coherence length exceeding 2~nm, as required for electron
diffraction
Quasimonoenergetic electron beams produced by colliding cross-polarized laser pulses in underdense plasmas
The interaction of two laser pulses in an underdense plasma has proven to be
able to inject electrons in plasma waves, thus providing a stable and tunable
source of electrons. Whereas previous works focused on the "beatwave" injection
scheme in which two lasers with the same polarization collide in a plasma, this
present letter studies the effect of polarization and more specifically the
interaction of two colliding cross-polarized laser pulses. It is shown both
theoretically and experimentally that electrons can also be pre-accelerated and
injected by the stochastic heating occurring at the collision of two
cross-polarized lasers and thus, a new regime of optical injection is
demonstrated. It is found that injection with cross-polarized lasers occurs at
higher laser intensities.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Where Fail-Safe Default Logics Fail
Reiter's original definition of default logic allows for the application of a
default that contradicts a previously applied one. We call failure this
condition. The possibility of generating failures has been in the past
considered as a semantical problem, and variants have been proposed to solve
it. We show that it is instead a computational feature that is needed to encode
some domains into default logic
Laser-plasma interactions with a Fourier-Bessel Particle-in-Cell method
A new spectral particle-in-cell (PIC) method for plasma modeling is presented
and discussed. In the proposed scheme, the Fourier-Bessel transform is used to
translate the Maxwell equations to the quasi-cylindrical spectral domain. In
this domain, the equations are solved analytically in time, and the spatial
derivatives are approximated with high accuracy. In contrast to the
finite-difference time domain (FDTD) methods that are commonly used in PIC, the
developed method does not produce numerical dispersion, and does not involve
grid staggering for the electric and magnetic fields. These features are
especially valuable in modeling the wakefield acceleration of particles in
plasmas. The proposed algorithm is implemented in the code PLARES-PIC, and the
test simulations of laser plasma interactions are compared to the ones done
with the quasi-cylindrical FDTD PIC code CALDER-CIRC.Comment: submitted to Phys. Plasma
SO(4) Invariant States in Quantum Cosmology
The phenomenon of linearisation instability is identified in models of
quantum cosmology that are perturbations of mini-superspace models. In
particular, constraints that are second order in the perturbations must be
imposed on wave functions calculated in such models. It is shown explicitly
that in the case of a model which is a perturbation of the mini-superspace
which has spatial sections these constraints imply that any wave
functions calculated in this model must be SO(4) invariant. (This replaces the
previous corrupted version.)Comment: 15 page
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