Sep 13 – 19, 2015
La Biodola, Isola d'Elba
Europe/Rome timezone

Hosing in Multi-Pulse Laser Wakefield Accelerators

Sep 14, 2015, 7:10 PM
20m
SML Sala Maria Luisa (Hotel Hermitage)

SML Sala Maria Luisa

Hotel Hermitage

talk WG1 - Electron beams from plasmas WG1 - Electron beams from plasmas

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. We will describe our study of one potential issue for MP-LWFAs: laser pulse hosing. This can arise when the centroid of a laser pulse is displaced from the axis of the wake or pulse guiding structure, due to transverse refractive index gradients. We use three-dimensional (axial symmetry), weakly relativistic fluid simulations and particle-in-cell simulations to study the effect of random and systematic pulse misalignment. We show that hosing can be stabilized by adjusting the laser pulse separation and/or by channelling the laser pulses in a waveguide.

Primary authors

Prof. Roman Walczak (University of Oxford) Prof. Simon Hooker (University of Oxford) Dr Stuart Mangles (Imperial College)

Presentation materials