Speaker
Description
Plasma-based accelerators have the potential to reduce the size, cost, and carbon footprint for a wide variety of applications, including light sources and linear colliders, due to the ultra-high electric-field strengths that can be sustained in the accelerating structure. However, the nonlinear processes typically involved with this mechanism place stringent demands on the plasma’s initial
conditions, as shot to shot fluctuations in parameters such as density and temperature potentially lead to large instabilities in the accelerated electron beams. This problem is increasingly relevant as research pushes towards higher repetition rates, resulting in significant heat deposition in to the plasma medium and the target substrate. In the High-average-power Plasma-accelerator
Experimentation (HiPE) Laboratory in Oxford, we are developing a set of diagnostics to map the
energy deposition and transport in beam- and laser-driven plasma-wakefield accelerators. We aim to show that the most important plasma parameters—temperature and density profiles of the plasma electrons and ions, as well as heat load on the materials used to produce and contain the plasma—can be obtained using minimally invasive all-optical techniques that can be transported to plasma-accelerator facilities for parasitic measurements during experimentation.
