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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 100 » Issue 21
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 215004 (2008) [4 pages]

Plasma-Density-Gradient Injection of Low Absolute-Momentum-Spread Electron Bunches

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C. G. R. Geddes1,*, K. Nakamura1, G. R. Plateau1,†, Cs. Toth1, E. Cormier-Michel1,‡, E. Esarey1,‡, C. B. Schroeder1, J. R. Cary2,§, and W. P. Leemans1,**
1Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd., Berkeley, California 94720, USA
2Tech-X Corporation, 5621 Arapahoe Ave. Ste. A, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA

Received 3 July 2007; published 30 May 2008

Plasma density gradients in a gas jet were used to control the wake phase velocity and trapping threshold in a laser wakefield accelerator, producing stable electron bunches with longitudinal and transverse momentum spreads more than 10 times lower than in previous experiments (0.17 and 0.02  MeV/c FWHM, respectively) and with central momenta of 0.76±0.02  MeV/c. Transition radiation measurements combined with simulations indicated that the bunches can be used as a wakefield accelerator injector to produce stable beams with 0.2  MeV/c-class momentum spread at high energies.

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.215004
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.215004
PACS:
52.38.Kd, 29.25.Bx, 41.75.Jv

*cgrgeddes@lbl.gov

†Also at École Polytechnique, France.

‡Also at U. Nevada, Reno, USA.

§Also at U. Colorado, Boulder, USA.

**Also at U. Nevada, Reno, and U.C. Berkeley, USA.

 
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