Dual-energy electron beams from a compact laser-driven accelerator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the generation of dual-energy electron beams from a compact laser wakefield accelerator, enabling new ultrafast pump-probe experiments with synchronized, high-energy beams on a laboratory scale.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to produce synchronized twin-electron beams with independently adjustable energies from a single compact laser-driven source.

Findings

Twin-electron beams generated simultaneously with adjustable energies.

Bunch lengths and delays are inherently femtoseconds.

Proof-of-concept for multi-beam experiments in laboratory settings.

Abstract

Ultrafast pump-probe experiments open the possibility to track fundamental material behaviour like changes in its electronic configuration in real time. To date, most of these experiments are performed using an electron or a high-energy photon beam, which is synchronized to an infrared laser pulse. Entirely new opportunities can be explored if not only a single, but multiple synchronized, ultra-short, high-energy beams are used. However, this requires advanced radiation sources that are capable of producing dual-energy electron beams, for example. Here, we demonstrate simultaneous generation of twin-electron beams from a single compact laser wakefield accelerator. The energy of each beam can be individually adjusted over a wide range and our analysis shows that the bunch lengths and their delay inherently amount to femtoseconds. Our proof-of-concept results demonstrate an elegant way to perform multi-beam experiments in future on a laboratory scale.