Sep 15 – 21, 2019
Hotel Hermitage, La Biodola Bay, Isola d'Elba, Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

Measurement of the decay rate of laser-driven linear wakefields

Sep 19, 2019, 6:20 PM
20m
SB1 (Hotel Hermitage)

SB1

Hotel Hermitage

talk WG5 - Plasma devices, plasma and beam diagnostics WG5-Targets

Speaker

Jakob Jonnerby (University of Oxford)

Description

Multi-pulse laser wakefield acceleration (MP-LWFA) is a promising scheme for increasing the repetition rate of LWFAs to to the kHz range [1-2] In this approach the laser wakefield is driven by a train of laser pulses spaced by the plasma wavelength such that the wakefields driven by each pulse interfere coherently.

A major consideration for MP-LWFA is the decay time of the wakefield, since this determines the maximum number of laser pulses that can be used. The decay time is determined by the motion of the plasma ions, which is usually neglected for short pulse drivers.

We present experimental and numerical investigations of the decay of wakefields driven in hydrogen and deuterium plasmas. The temporal decay of the amplitude of a wakefield, driven by a 44 fs laser pulse of laser parameter a0 ~ 0.5, was measured by the Temporally Encoded Spectral Shifting (TESS) method [3-4]. These results show that the amplitude of the wakefield decreases by 50% in approximately 1.3 ps, corresponding to 11 plasma periods. The experimental results are interpreted with the aid of 2D PIC simulations. A detailed design will be presented as a poster with title “Design of a laser-driven linear wakefield decay rate experiment”.

Primary author

Jakob Jonnerby (University of Oxford)

Co-authors

Christopher Arran (University of York) Laura Corner (Cockcroft Institute, University of Liverpool) James Holloway (The University of Oxford) Simon Hooker (University of Oxford) Alex Picksley (University of Oxford) Aimee Ross (University of Oxford) Rob Shalloo (Imperial College London) Christopher Thornton (STFC) Roman Walczak (University of Oxford) Mr Alexander von Boetticher (University of Oxford)

Presentation materials