Plasma-density-gradient injection of low absolute-momentum-spread electron bunches.
Plasma density gradients in a gas jet were used to control the wake phase velocity and trapping threshold in a laser wakefield accelerator, producing stable electron bunches with longitudinal and transverse momentum spreads more than 10 times lower than in previous experiments (0.17 and 0.02 MeV/c FWHM, respectively) and with central momenta of 0.76+/-0.02 MeV/c. Transition radiation measurements combined with simulations indicated that the bunches can be used as a wakefield accelerator injector to produce stable beams with 0.2 MeV/c-class momentum spread at high energies.
Geddes
C G R
CG
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. cgrgeddes@lbl.gov
Nakamura
K
K
Plateau
G R
GR
Toth
Cs
C
Cormier-Michel
E
E
Esarey
E
E
Schroeder
C B
CB
Cary
J R
JR
Leemans
W P
WP