External injection behind the laser pulse into a laser wakefield

An electron bunch, accelerated in a conventional accelerator to several MeV's, is focused into a plasma channel immediately behind a high-intensity drive laser pulse. Once the electron bunch enters the plasma channel, it will immediately experience the wakefield created there by the laser pulse. The bunch, which is generally several times longer than the plasma wavelength, will be sliced into several smaller bunches with a duration of a few femtoseconds and a transverse size of a few micrometer in the wakefield. These small bunches are formed in the phases of the wakefield where the focusing and accelerating parts overlap because this is where the electrons can be trapped and bunch compression takes place. The phases, where trapping can occur are separated by one plasma wavelength and thus the trapped bunches will also be separated by one plasma wavelength. Electrons that are not injected in the proper phase are scattered by the wakefield. https://sites.google.com/site/laserwakefieldacceleration

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• plasma
• laser
• wakefield
• accelerator
• physics
• external
• injection