Speaker
Description
We show the recent results of electron injection into the laser wakefield accelerators by interfering two intense, nearly colinear laser pulses in underdense plasma [1, 2]. In the experiment, electrons could be injected into either laser wakefields, or both, depending on the relative delay between two laser pulses’ arrival time to the interference point. Particle-in-cell simulations revealed that the interference ponderomotively drives a relativistic
plasma grating and triggers the delay-dependent injection. Such injection occurs in later acceleration buckets other than the leading ones and can potentially be combined with optimal plasma tapering, and the dephasing limit of such unprecedented electron beams could be potentially increased by an order of magnitude. Other injection phenomenon like electron beam splitting and ring electrons are also discussed.
[1] Q. Chen, D. Maslarova, J. Wang, S. X. Lee, V. Horný, and D. Umstadter, Transient Relativistic Plasma Grating to Tailor High-Power Laser Fields, Wakefield Plasma Waves, and Electron Injection, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 164801 (2022).
[2] Q. Chen, D. Maslarova, J. Wang, S. X. Lee, and D. Umstadter, Injection of electron beams into two laser wakefields and generation of electron rings, Phys. Rev. E. (Accepted).
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, High Energy Physics (HEP), under Award No. DE-SC0019421. Travel support was provided by
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Arts and Sciences International Research Collaboration Award. The simulation work is supported by Ministry of Education, Youth
and Sports from the Large Infrastructures for Research, Experimental Development and Innovations project “IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center – LM2018140.” This work is also supported by European Regional Development Fund-Project “Center for
Advanced Applied Science (No.CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16019/0000778 and
SGS16/248/OHK4/3T/14). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 647121 and 787539. The authors would like to thank Drs. Jan Psikal and Miroslav Krus for fruitful discussions on the topic.
