Two-Pulse Ionization Injection into Quasi-Linear Laser Wakefields

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel two-pulse ionization injection scheme for controlled electron injection into quasi-linear laser wakefields, achieving high-quality electron beams with low energy spread and emittance.

Contribution

It introduces a collinear injection laser pulse method for precise electron injection into laser wakefields, demonstrated through particle-in-cell simulations.

Findings

Electrons accelerated to 370 MeV

Energy spread of 2%

Normalized transverse emittance of 3.0 μm

Abstract

We describe a scheme for controlling electron injection into the quasi-linear wakefield driven by a guided drive pulse via ionization of a dopant species by a collinear injection laser pulse with a short Rayleigh range. The scheme is analyzed by particle in cell simulations which show controlled injection and acceleration of electrons to an energy of 370 MeV, a relative energy spread of 2%, and a normalized transverse emittance of 3.0 {\mu}m. This is an arXiv version of the original APS paper. It should be cited as N. Bourgeois, J. Cowley, and S. M. Hooker, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 155004 (2013). APS link here: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.155004