Synchronization of a Photo-Injector and a High Power Laser With Independent Clocks

Abstract

International audienceThe plasma acceleration project ESCULAP (ElectronS CoUrts pour L'Acc\'el\'eration Plasma) aims at studying electrons injection into a laser plasma accelerator. This requires the injection of short electron bunches generated by the photo injector PHIL (Photo injector at LAL) into a plasma wave by the high power femtosecond Laser LASERIX. As a first step we have studied how to synchronize PHIL and LASERIX. As these two machines had not been initially designed to work together, simple synchronization solutions were not available. We detail here the synchronisation scheme that we have tested and the experimental results obtained