Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
RadiaBeam, Marina del Rey
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
One approach for detecting special nuclear material (SNM) at a distance is to use highly penetrating gamma-rays (>6 MeV) to produce photofission. We are investigating inverse gamma-ray sources (IGS), based on inverse Compton scattering (ICS) of a laser pulse on a relativistic electron bunch. Nearly monochromatic gamma rays with high brightness, very small source size and divergence can be produced in IGS. For the interaction drive laser recirculation it is necessary to meet the repetition rate requirements. Three implementations of laser recirculation are proposed for the interaction drive laser, which can significantly reduce the requirements on the interaction drive laser average power. It is found that the recently demonstrated recirculation injection by nonlinear gating (RING) technique offers unique advantages for beam recirculation in IGS.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
USC, Los Angeles, California
Given the recent success of >GV/m dielectric wakefield accelerator (DWA) breakdown experiments at SLAC, and follow-on coherent Cerenkov radiation production at the UCLA Neptune, a UCLA-USC-SLAC collaboration is now implementing a new set of experiments that explore various DWA scenarios. These experiments are motivated by the opportunities presented by the approval of FACET facility at SLAC, as well as unique pulse-train wakefield drivers at BNL. The SLAC experiments permit further exploration of the multi-GeV/m envelope in DWAs, and will entail investigations of novel materials (e.g. CVD diamond) and geometries (Bragg cylindrical structures, slab-symmetric DWAs), and have an over-riding goal of demonstrating >GeV acceleration in ~33 cm DWA tubes. In the nearer term before FACET's commissioning, we are planning measurements at the BNL ATF, in which we drive ~50-200 MV/m fields with single pulses or pulse trains. These experiments are of high relevance to enhancing linear collider DWA designs, as they will demonstrate potential for high efficiency operatio with pulse trains.
UCLA, Los Angeles
Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York
The Micro-Accelerator Platform is an optical-wavelength microstructure for laser acceleration of particles, currently under development at UCLA. It is a slab-symmetric structure and can be constructed in layers using existing nanofabrication techniques. We present several possible fabrication techniques and preliminary experimental outcomes for manufacturing this structure.
UCLA, Los Angeles
PBPL, Los Angeles
Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York
Pyroelectric crystals, which produce large surface electric fields during heating and cooling, have been proposed as a mechanism for constructing a stand-alone electron beam source. We report on experimental tests of this concept, using a variety of field emission tips combined with a pyroelectric crystal to produce a low-energy electron beam during thermal cycling. The mechanism is suitable for generating very small electron bunches, with energies up to tens of kilovolts, for use in microaccelerator structures.
UCLA, Los Angeles
PBPL, Los Angeles
Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York
This paper extends the physics of the Micro-Accelerator Platform (MAP), which is in development as an optical structure for laser acceleration of relativistic electrons. The MAP is a resonant, optical-scale, slab-symmetric device that is fabricated from dielectric materials using layer-deposition techniques. For stand-alone applications, low-energy electrons (beta ~ 0.3) must be synchronously accelerated to relativistic speeds for injection into the MAP. Even lower energies are desired for other particle species (e.g. protons or muons). In this paper, we present design and simulation studies on a tapered geometry and associated coupling scheme that can produce synchronous acceleration at beta < 1 within a MAP-like structure.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
USC, Los Angeles, California
Recent initiatives at UCLA concerning ultra-short, GeV electron beam generation have been aimed at achieving sub-fs pulses capable of driving X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) in single-spike mode. This uses of very low charge beams, which may allow existing FEL injectors to produce few-100 attosecond pulses, with very high brightness. Towards this end, recent experiments at the Stanford X-ray FEL (LCLS, first of its kind, built with essential UCLA leadership) have produced ~2 fs, 20 pC electron pulses. We discuss here extensions of this work, in which we seek to exploit the beam brightness in FELs, in tandem with new developments at UCLA in cryogenic undulator technology, to create compact accelerator/undulator systems that can lase below 0.15 Angstroms, or be used to permit 1.5 Angstrom operation at 4.5 GeV. In addition, we are now developing experiments which use the present LCLS fs pulses to excite plasma wakefields exceeding 1 TV/m, permitting a table-top TeV accelerator for frontier high energy physics applications.