SLAC, Menlo Park, California
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
USC, Los Angeles, California
Funding: Work supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-76SF00515.
Recent progress in generating gradients in the 10's of GV/m range with beam driven plasmas has renewed interest in developing a linear collider based on this technology. This talk will explore possible configurations of such a machine, discuss the key demonstrations and the facilities needed to advance this effort and highlight possible alternative uses of this technology.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon
Funding: Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian and Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia under grants SFRH/BD/35749/2007.
The possibility of using a CO2 laser (10 micron wavelength) to drive a plasma density compression and achieve effective ion acceleration in gaseous targets (density>~ 1019cm-3) is explored. A parameter scan is performed with a set of particle in cell simulations in OSIRIS*, both in 2D and 3D, for various laser intensities, linear/circular polarization pulses, and plasma densities. Results show that, to generate the shock compression, plasma density must be increased above the critical value to account for the relativistic motion of the electrons. Under these conditions, 2-5MeV ions are observed with moderate intensity (a0=3) laser pulses. Finally, configurations to generate a shock structure are suggested, that will more efficiently accelerate the particles. This scenario is also of particular relevance to fast-ignition, inertial confinement fusion, and implications to those regimes can be obtained from numerical simulations by using the appropriate density normalization.
*R. A. Fonseca et al, LNCS 2329, III-342, Springer-Verlag, (2002)
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
USC, Los Angeles, California
Funding: Work supported by the DOE under contract DE-AC02-76SF00515.
Plasma Wake-Field Acceleration (PWFA) has demonstrated acceleration gradients above 50 GeV/m. Simulations have shown drive/witness bunch configurations that yield small energy spreads in the accelerated witness bunch and high energy transfer efficiency from the drive bunch to the witness bunch, ranging from 30% for a Gaussian drive bunch to 95% for shaped longitudinal profile. These results open the opportunity for a linear collider that could be compact, efficient and more cost effective that the present microwave technologies. A concept of a PWFA-based Linear Collider (PWFA-LC) has been developed and is described in this paper. The scheme of the drive beam generation and distribution, requirements on the plasma cells, and optimization of the interaction region parameters are described in detail. The research and development steps, necessary for further development of the concept, are also outlined.
Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Funding: F.C.Gulbenkian, F.C.T. [SFRH/BD/35749/2007, SFRH/BD/39523/2007, PTDC/FIS/66823/2006 (Portugal)], and European Community (project EuroLeap, contract #028514)
It is now accepted that self-trapped electrons in a laser wakefield accelerator operating in the "bubble" regime undergo strong periodic oscillations about the wakefield axis because of the focusing force provided by the ions. This betatron motion of the off-axis electrons results in the emission of x-ray radiation strongly peaked in the forward direction. Even though the x-rays are broadband with a synchrotron-like spectrum, their brightness can be quite high because of their short pulse duration and strong collimation. We employ particle tracking in particle in cell simulations with OSIRIS*, combined with a post-processing radiation diagnostic, to evaluate the features of the radiation mechanisms of accelerated electrons in LWFA experiments. We show and discuss results for a 1.5 GeV laser wakefield accelerator stage. A study of the angular dependence of the radiated power is also presented and compared with theoretical models. This analysis also allows for the direct calculation of the radiation losses of the self-injected bunch.
*R. A. Fonseca et al, LNCS 2329, III-342, Springer-Verlag, (2002)
LLNL, Livermore, California
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
UCSD, La Jolla, California
Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and DE-FG03-92ER40727, and LDRD 06-ERD-056
Recent laser wakefield acceleration experiments at the Jupiter Laser Facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will be discussed where the Callisto Laser has been upgraded and has demonstrated 60 fs, 10 J laser pulses. This 150 TW facility is providing the foundation to develop a GeV electron beam and associated betatron x-ray source for use on the petawatt high-repetition rate laser facility currently under development at LLNL. Initial self-guided experiments have produced high energy monoenergetic electrons while experiments using a multi-centimeter long magnetically controlled optical plasma waveguide are investigated. Measurements of the electron energy gain and electron trapping threshold using 150 TW laser pulses will be presented.
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
USC, Los Angeles, California
Funding: Work supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-76SF00515.
An electron beam driven Plasma Wake-Field Accelerator (PWFA) has recently sustained accelerating gradients above 50GeV/m for almost a meter. Future experiments will transition from using a single bunch to both drive and sample the wakefield, to a two bunch configuration that will accelerate a discrete bunch of particles with a narrow energy spread and preserved emittance. The plasma works as an energy transformer to transform high-current, low-energy bunches into relatively lower-current higher-energy bunches. This method is expected to provide high energy transfer efficiency (from 30% up to 95%) from the drive bunch to the accelerated witness bunch. The PWFA has a wide variety of applications and also has the potential to greatly lower the cost of future accelerators. We discuss various possible uses of this technique such as: linac based light sources, injector systems for ring based synchrotron light sources, and for generation of electron beams for high energy electron-hadron colliders.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
USC, Los Angeles, California
Funding: Work supported by DOE under contracts DE-FG03-92ER40727, DE-FG52-06NA26195, DE-FC02-07ER41500, DE-FG02-03ER54721.
Recent Plasma Wake-Field Acceleration (PWFA) experiments at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center has demonstrated electron acceleration from 42GeV to 84GeV in less than one meter long plasma section. The accelerating gradient is above 50GeV/m, which is three orders of magnitude higher than those in current state-of-art RF linac. Further experiments are also planned with the goal of achieving acceleration of a witness bunch with high efficiency and good quality. Such PWFA sections with 25 GeV energy gain will be the building blocks for a staged TeV electron-positron linear collider concept based on PWFA (PWFA-LC). We conduct Particle-In-Cell simulations of these PWFA sections at both the initial and final witness beam energies. Different design options, such as Gaussian and shaped bunch profiles, self-ionized and pre-ionized plasmas, optimal bunch separation and plasma density are explored. Theoretical analysis of the beam-loading* in the blow-out regime of PWFA and simulation results show that highly efficient PWFA stages are possible. The simulation needs, code developments and preliminary simulation results for future collider parameters will be discussed.
*M. Tzoufras et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. {10}1, 145002 (2008).
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
Funding: Work supported by DOE grant numbers: DE-FG03-92ER40727, DE-FG52-06NA26195, DE-FC02-07ER41500, DE-FG02-03ER54721
The fourth generation of light sources (such as LCLS and the XFEL) require high energy electron drivers (16-20GeV) of very high quality. We are exploring the possibility of using a high transformer ratio PWFA to meet these challenging requirements. This may have the potential to reduce the size of the electron drivers by a factor of 5 or more, therefore making these light source much smaller and more affordable. In our design, a high charge (5-10nC) low energy driver (1-3GeV) with an elongated current profile is used to drive a plasma wake in the blowout regime with a high transformer ratio (5 or more). A second ultra-short beam that has high quality and low charge beam (1nC) can be loaded into the wake at a proper phase and be accelerated to high energy (5-15GeV) in very short distances (10s of cms). The parameters can be optimized, such that high quality (0.1% energy spread and 1mm mrad normalized emittance) and high efficiency (60-80%) can be simultaneously achieved. The major obstacle for achieving the above goals is the electron hosing instabilities in the blowout regime. In this poster, we will use both theoretical analysis and PIC simulations to study this concept.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon
Funding: Work Supported by DOE Grant DEFG02-92ER40727
Controlling the trapping of electrons into accelerating wakefields is an important step to obtaining a stable reproducible electron beam from a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA). Recent experiments at UCLA have focused on using the different ionization potentials of gases as a mechanism for controlling the trapping of electrons into an LWFA. The accelerating wakefield was produced using an ultra-intense (Io ~ 1019 W / cm2 ), ultra-short (τFWHM ~ 40 fs) laser pulses. The laser pulse was focused onto the edge of column of gas created by a gas jet. The gas was a mixture of helium and nitrogen. The rising edge of the laser pulse fully ionizes the helium and the first five bound electrons of the nitrogen. Only at the peak of the laser pulse is it intense enough to ionize the most tightly bound electrons of the nitrogen. Electrons which are ionized at the peak of laser pulse are born into a favorable phase space within the accelerating wakefield and are subsequently trapped and accelerated. The accelerated electrons were dispersed using a dipole magnet with a ~ 1 Tesla magnetic field onto a phosphor screen. Electron beam energy spectrum charge and divergence were measured.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Funding: This work was supported by The Department of Energy Grant No.DEFG02-92ER40727.
The self-guiding of relativistically intense but ultra-short laser pulses has been experimentally investigated as a function of laser power, plasma density and plasma length in the so-called "blowout" regime. Although etching of the short laser pulse due to diffraction and local pump depletion erodes the the head of the laser pulse, an intense portion of the pulse is guided over tens of Rayleigh lengths, as observed by imaging the exit of the plasma. Spectrally-resolved images of the laser pulse at the exit of the plasma show evidence for photon acceleration as well as deceleration (pump depletion)in a well defined narrow guided region. This is indicative of the self-guided pulse residing in the wake excited in the plasma. Energy outside the guided region was found to be minimized when the initial conditions at the plasma entrance were closest to the theoretical matching conditions for guiding in the blowout regime. The maximum extent of the guided length is shown to be consistent with the nonlinear pump depletion length predicted by theory.
UCSD, La Jolla, California
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
LLNL, Livermore, California
We present experimental results showing the formation of a laser produced optical waveguide, suitable for laser guiding, when applying a high external magnetic field around a gas cell. This technique is directly applicable to wakefield acceleration and has been established at the Jupiter Laser Facility; an external magnetic field prevents radial heat transport, resulting in an increased electron temperature gradient [D. H. Froula et.al., Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion, 51, 024009 (2009)]. Interferometry and spatially resolved Thomson-scattering diagnostics measure the radial electron density profile, and show that multiple-centimeter long waveguides with minimum electron densities of 1017 to 1018 cm-3 can be produced. Temporally resolved Thomson-scattering is also performed to characterize the evolution of the density channel in time. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was partially funded by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program under project tracking code 06-ERD-056.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Funding: This work was supported by DOE grants DE-FG03-92ER40727 and DE-FG03-92ER40693
Many proposals and ongoing national projects exist worldwide to build a single-pass X-ray FEL amplifier in which a high-brightness, multi-GeV electron beam has a resonant energy exchange with radiation in an undulator. Because of the practical limit on the undulator period, the electron beam energy represents one of constraints on the shortest reachable wavelength. Recently the high-order harmonic FEL/IFEL interactions were considered theoretically as a technique that would allow the reduction of the beam energy without corresponding decrease in the undulator period and the magnetic field strength. We demonstrate microbunching of the 12.3 MeV electrons in a 7th order IFEL interaction, where the seed radiation frequency is seven times higher then the fundamental frequency. Strong longitudinal modulation of the beam is inferred from the observation of the first, second and third harmonics of the seed radiation in a Coherent Transition Radiation spectrum. The level of seed power is comparable to that required for microbunching at the fundamental frequency of the ten-period-long undulator. The implications of these results for the next generation of FELs will be explored.
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
USC, Los Angeles, California
High gradient acceleration of electrons has recently been achieved in meter scale plasmas at SLAC. Results from these experiments show that the wakefield is sensitive to parameters in the electron beam which drives it. In the experiment the bunch lengths were varied systematically at constant charge. Here we investigate the correlation of peak beam current to the wake amplitude. The effect of beam head erosion will be discussed and an experimental limit on the transformer ratio set. The results are compared to simulation.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Funding: This work is supported by the DOE Contract No. DE-FG03-92ER40727.
Over the last several years, the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) mechanism in solid density plasmas produced by a laser pulse has achieved proton energies up to 10’s of MeV and quasi-monoenergetic beams at lower energies. Although solid-target experiments have demonstrated high-charge and low-emittance proton beams, little work has been done with gaseous targets which in principle can be operated at a very high repetition frequency. At the Neptune Laboratory, there is an ongoing experiment on CO2 laser driven proton acceleration using a rectangular (0.5x2mm) H2 gas jet as a target. The main goal is to study the coupling of the laser pulse into a plasma with a well defined density in the range of 0.5 to 2 times critical density and characterize the corresponding spectra of accelerated protons. Towards this end, the Neptune TW CO2 laser system is being upgraded to produce shorter 1-3ps pulses. These high-power pulses will allow us to investigate acceleration of protons via the TNSA and Direct Ponderomotive Pressure mechanisms as well as their combination. The current status of the proton source experiment will be presented.