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Contribution to Book
Petawatt-laser-driven wakefield acceleration of electrons to 2 GeV in 10^{17} cm^{-3} plasma
AIP Conference Proceedings: Advanced Accelerator Concepts: 15th Workshop (2012)
  • Xiaoming Wang
  • Rafal B. Zgadzaj
  • Neil Fazel
  • Sunghwan A. Yi
  • X. Zhang
  • Watson Henderson
  • Yen-Yu Zhang
  • Rick Korzekwa
  • Hai-En Tsai
  • C.-H. Pai
  • Zhengyan Li
  • Hernan Quevedo
  • Gilliss Dyer
  • Erhard W. Gaul
  • Mikael Martinez
  • Aaron Bernstein
  • Ted Borger
  • M. Spinks
  • M. Donovan
  • Serguei Y. Kalmykov
  • Vladimir N. Khudik
  • Gennady Shvets
  • Todd Ditmire
  • Michael C. Downer
Abstract

Electron self-injection into a laser-plasma accelerator (LPA) driven by the Texas Petawatt (TPW) laser is reported at plasma densities 1.7 - 6.2 x 10^{17} cm^{-3}. Energy and charge of the electron beam, ranging from 0.5 GeV to 2 GeV and tens to hundreds of pC, respectively, depended strongly on laser beam quality and plasma density. Angular beam divergence was consistently around 0.5 mrad (FWHM), while shot-to-shot pointing fluctuations were limited to ±1.4 mrad rms. Betatron x-rays with tens of keV photon energy are also clearly observed.

Keywords
  • Laser wakefield acceleration,
  • Texas Petawatt laser,
  • 2 GeV electrons from laser plasmas,
  • betatron radiation
Publication Date
Winter December 21, 2012
Editor
R. B. Zgadzaj, E. W. Gaul, and M. C. Downer
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
ISBN
978-0-7354-1125-8
Citation Information
Xiaoming Wang, Rafal B. Zgadzaj, Neil Fazel, Sunghwan A. Yi, et al.. "Petawatt-laser-driven wakefield acceleration of electrons to 2 GeV in 10^{17} cm^{-3} plasma" New YorkAIP Conference Proceedings: Advanced Accelerator Concepts: 15th Workshop Vol. 1507 (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/serguei_kalmykov/31/