Beam Manipulation of Laser-Plasma Accelerated Beams for Advanced Accelerator and Radiation Source Applications

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Plasma acceleration is a cutting-edge technique for accelerating charged particles such as electrons using the electric field associated with a plasma structure, such as an electron plasma wave. The plasma structure is created using either ultra-short laser pulses or particle beams. This technique offers a way to build high performance particle accelerators of much smaller size than conventional accelerator techniques. This award will further develop Laser-Plasma accelerators (LPA). Applications of LPA electron beams require capture, transport, and manipulation of the electron beam following exit of the plasma accelerator. This award will investigate two aspects of beam dynamics following the plasma accelerator that are critical to future applications: 1. Coupling of the LPA beam into conventional beam transport systems. 2. Beam decompression to enable light source applications. This work will benefit most applications of LPA beams, in particular for high energy physics and light source applications. The production of high-energy particle beams for particle physics applications requires the staging of multiple LPAs, and the proposed research will directly impact the design of the LPA beam coupling system between stages. An LPA driven Free Electron Laser (FEL) is considered one of the most promising near-term applications of LPA technology, and this research will lay the groundwork for the first proof-of-principle demonstration of an LPA-driven FEL generating coherent, high-peak brightness x-rays. The intellectual merit of this award lies in the development of practical LPA applications such as future high-energy physics beams for exploration of new physics. This will be done by exploring solutions to the two issues mentioned above. First, the use of tailored plasma profiles will be investigated to reduce the beam divergence, enabling improved coupling to a conventional beam transport system. Second, by exploring Free-Electron lasers (FEL). LPAs deliver high peak current beams, and, hence, it is natural to consider LPA beams as drivers for FELs. Although the FEL application is presently hindered by the energy spread (few percent) of the LPA electron beam, application of LPA beams to FELs may be accomplished using experimentally-demonstrated LPA beam properties by beam phase space manipulation following the LPA. This project considers decompression of the femtosecond LPA beam, reducing the beam slice energy spread, enabling FEL lasing.