Analytical energy spectra and wake effects for relativistic dielectric laser accelerators

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytical method to calculate energy spectra and wake effects in relativistic dielectric laser accelerators, aiding in phase reconstruction, alignment, and understanding wakefield impacts on electron bunches.

Contribution

It presents a novel analytical approach to determine energy spectra and wakefield effects in DLA, facilitating better experimental analysis and phase control.

Findings

Analytical energy spectra can be used to reconstruct injection phase.

Wakefield effects significantly influence energy distribution.

Transverse kicks are estimated for off-centered electron bunches.

Abstract

Dielectric laser acceleration (DLA) is one of the advanced concepts for more compact accelerators. DLA gratings have apertures and period lengths within the range of optical wavelengths. Phase stability and wakefield effects are thus crucial for upcoming experiments with relativistic electrons. For this, we present a method to analytically calculate energy spectra for comparison with measurements in order to reconstruct the phase of injection into the DLA grating structure. Knowing the injection phase is important for both alignment and interpretation of measured data. Furthermore, we estimate the effects of wakefields on bunches which are coherently accelerated in a DLA. We are calculating the energy spectrum affected by the longitudinal wake by evaluating the analytical description numerically and give estimates for the transverse kicks of an off-centered injected electron bunch.