Speaker
Description
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) of electrons occurs when an intense short laser pulse focused in an underdense plasma drives in its wake a plasma wave with an amplitude large enough to trap and accelerate electrons. Relativistic electron bunches are easily obtained through this mechanism and have given rise to a large number of studies and publications. Despite these efforts, the achievement of a high quality reliable electron source, ready for use in applications, still needs some developments.
Electron beams with high quality, and tunable electron energy, have been achieved by the authors using the DRACO facility (HZDR Dresden), showing that the injection and acceleration processes can be controlled consistently in a gas cell. Dark current free, relativistic electron bunches with energy peaked at tunable values between 60 MeV, and 200 MeV, 40 pC charge in the peak and sub-mrad rms divergence, reaching up to 14pC/MeV/mrad, have been achieved experimentally and reproduced in PIC simulations using measured input parameters. On going work is aimed at increasing the charge in the peak beyond 100pC through new gas cell development.
