Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: External injection of electron bunches longer than the plasma wavelength in a laser wakefield accelerator can lead to the generation of femtosecond ultra relativistic bunches with a couple of percent energy spread. Extensive study has been done on external electron bunch (e.g., one generated by a photo-cathode RF linac) injection in a laser wakefield for different configurations. In this paper, we investigate a new way of external injection where the electron bunch is injected at a small angle into the wakefield. This way one can avoid the ponderomotive scattering as well as the vacuum-plasma transition region, which tend to destroy the injected bunch. In our simulations, the effect of the laser pulse dynamics is also taken into account. It is shown that injection at an angle can provide compressed and accelerated electron bunches with less than 2% energy spread. Another advantage of this scheme is that it has less stringent requirements in terms of the size of the injected bunch and there is the potential to trap more charge.
Source: Laser and Particle Beams
Authors: M.J.H. Luttikhof, A.G. Khachatryan, F.A. van Goor, K.-J. Boller, P. Mora
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2140369238