Speaker
Prof.
Roman Walczak
(University of Oxford)
Description
It has now been shown experimentally that electrons can be accelerated to 4-GeV energies in a plasma wakefield driven by a single high-intensity laser pulse. However, such laser systems have limited repetition rates and low wall-plug efficiency. An alternative method is to resonantly excite plasma oscillations using a train of laser pulses of lower intensity spaced by the plasma period to drive multi-pulse laser wakefield accelerators (MP-LWFAs). Fibre and thin-disc laser technologies offer the possibility to drive MP-LWFAs efficiently and at high repetition rate (tens of kHz), opening a new domain for applications including compact X-ray sources with high mean brightness.
MP-LWFA based accelerators would require propagation of trains of laser pulses over tens of centimetres in plasma channels. An attractive possibility is a plasma channel based on hydrodynamic expansion of plasma column formed by optical field ionization. Transverse plasma density gradients as well as a combination of pump photon deceleration and group velocity dispersion need to be taken into account designing MP-LWFA accelerators. We will present outcomes of our studies using the two-dimensional EPOCH PIC code.
Primary author
Prof.
Roman Walczak
(University of Oxford)
Co-authors
Mr
Christopher Arran
(University of Oxford)
Mr
James Chappell
(University of Oxforfd)
Dr
James Holloway
(The University of Oxford)
Dr
Laura Corner
(JAI, Oxford University)
Mr
Robert Shalloo
(JAI, University of Oxford)
Prof.
Simon Hooker
(University of Oxford)
