Electron Beam Chirp Dexterity in Staging Laser Wakefield Acceleration

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that controlling the electron beam chirp in laser wakefield acceleration significantly reduces energy spread, enabling high-quality electron beams suitable for staged acceleration to GeV energies.

Contribution

It introduces the use of electron beam chirp as a tool to improve beam quality in staged laser wakefield acceleration, supported by particle-in-cell simulations.

Findings

Properly chosen beam chirps decrease energy dispersion by an order of magnitude.

Chirp control compensates for non-uniform acceleration fields.

Simulation results show potential for GeV-level electron acceleration.

Abstract

Particle energy chirp is shown to be a useful instrument in the staging laser wake field acceleration directed to generation of high-quality dense electron beams. The chirp is a necessary tool to compensate non-uniformity of acceleration field in longitudinal direction and achieve essential reduction of energy dispersion. This is demonstrated via particle-in-cell simulations exploiting the splitting technique for plasma and beam electrons. Properly chosen beam chirps allow decrease in the energy dispersion of order of magnitude in every single stage during acceleration to the GeV energy range.