Experimental generation of extreme electron beams for advanced accelerator applications

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental creation of extremely high-energy, ultra-short, high-current electron beams in a particle accelerator, enabling new research opportunities in high-intensity interactions and quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel laser-electron beam shaping technique for generating and controlling extreme electron beams in a laboratory setting.

Findings

Successful generation of 10 GeV electron beams with 0.1 MA current

Control over beam properties via laser-electron shaping

Potential applications in high-field physics and quantum electrodynamics

Abstract

In this Letter we report on the experimental generation of high energy (10 GeV), ultra-short (fs-duration), ultra-high current (0.1 MA), petawatt peak power electron beams in a particle accelerator. These extreme beams enable the exploration of a new frontier of high intensity beam-light and beam-matter interactions broadly relevant across fields ranging from laboratory astrophysics to strong field quantum electrodynamics and ultra-fast quantum chemistry. We demonstrate our ability to generate and control the properties of these electron beams by means of a laser-electron beam shaping technique. This experimental demonstration opens the door to on-the-fly customization of extreme beam current profiles for desired experiments and is poised to benefit a broad swathe of cross-cutting applications of relativistic electron beams.