18–24 Sept 2022
Hotel Hermitage, La Biodola Bay, Isola d'Elba, Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

Development and characterization of Plasma Targets for LWFA experiments at SPARC_LAB

20 Sept 2022, 19:00
20m
Sala Maria Luisa - Hotel Hermitage

Sala Maria Luisa - Hotel Hermitage

Invited talk Special Topic

Speaker

Gemma Costa (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Description

One of the most important features of laser-plasma based accelerators is their compactness while still providing very high accelerating fields up to hundreds of GV/m. The main challenge lies in characterizing and controlling the plasma itself, which determines its proper synchronization with the particle beam to be accelerated, an issue that strongly influences the quality of the accelerated bunches.
The characterization and optimization of plasma targets used at the SPARC_LAB laboratories for LWFA will be presented. In particular, the study and the realization of the plasma guiding process of a laser pulse inside a plasma-filled capillary discharge will be shown. This laser pulse confinement technique becomes particularly relevant for extending the acceleration channel, for example, in a plasma elongated to several centimeters or more. It will be discussed how this optical process was achieved for an ultra-short $10\ mJ$ laser pulse in a $500\ \mu m$ diameter capillary discharge, using time-resolved online spectroscopic measurements of the transverse and longitudinal density distribution of the generated plasma.

Primary authors

Gemma Costa (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Maria Pia Anania (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Sahar Arjmand (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Angelo Biagioni (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Alessandro Cianchi (University of Rome Tor Vergata and INFN) Lucio Crincoli (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Martina Del Giorno (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Mario Galletti (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Riccardo Pompili (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Stefano Romeo (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Andrea Renato Rossi (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Arie Zigler Massimo Ferrario (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Presentation materials