Speaker
Description
High-brightness, ultra-high peak current electron beams are of significant interest to applications including high-energy colliders, strong field quantum electrodynamics, and laboratory astrophysics. Despite such interest, compressing tightly-focused electron beams to attosecond pulse durations and mega-amp peak currents while preserving beam quality remains a challenge. In this work, we examine the feasibility and challenges involved in generating such extreme beams using plasma-based compression and laser shaping techniques.
Using simulations, we demonstrate that plasma wakefields enable orders-of-magnitude greater compression than conventional radiofrequency techniques, offering a pathway to achieving unprecedented beam parameters. We examine the scaling of beam properties with accelerator and plasma parameters, identifying the limits on achievable beam brightness and the optimal conditions for different applications. Complementary to these studies, we report on the experimental generation of beams with petawatt peak power at FACET-II, shaped using a laser heater. We demonstrate the on-demand manipulation of the beam’s current profile for triggerable beam-induced ionization in gas targets. Together, these techniques pave the way for the next-generation of high-brightness electron beams.
