文章基本信息

标题：Electron energy increase in a laser wakefield accelerator using up-ramp plasma density profiles
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作者：Constantin Aniculaesei ; Vishwa Bandhu Pathak ; Hyung Taek Kim 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2019
卷号：9
期号：1
页码：1-7
DOI：10.1038/s41598-019-47677-5
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：The phase velocity of the wakefield of a laser wakefield accelerator can, theoretically, be manipulated by shaping the longitudinal plasma density profile, thus controlling the parameters of the generated electron beam. We present an experimental method where using a series of shaped longitudinal plasma density profiles we increased the mean electron peak energy more than 50%, from 175 ± 1 MeV to 262 ± 10 MeV and the maximum peak energy from 182 MeV to 363 MeV. The divergence follows closely the change of mean energy and decreases from 58.9 ± 0.45 mrad to 12.6 ± 1.2 mrad along the horizontal axis and from 35 ± 0.3 mrad to 8.3 ± 0.69 mrad along the vertical axis. Particle-in-cell simulations show that a ramp in a plasma density profile can affect the evolution of the wakefield, thus qualitatively confirming the experimental results. The presented method can increase the electron energy for a fixed laser power and at the same time offer an energy tunable source of electrons.