Petawatt Laser Guiding and Electron Beam Acceleration to 8 GeV in a Laser-Heated Capillary Discharge Waveguide

A J Gonsalves; K Nakamura; J Daniels; C Benedetti; C Pieronek; T C H de Raadt; S Steinke; J H Bin; S S Bulanov; J van Tilborg; C G R Geddes; C B Schroeder; Cs Tóth; E Esarey; K Swanson; L Fan-Chiang; G Bagdasarov; N Bobrova; V Gasilov; G Korn; P Sasorov; W P Leemans

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.084801

Petawatt Laser Guiding and Electron Beam Acceleration to 8 GeV in a Laser-Heated Capillary Discharge Waveguide

Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Mar 1;122(8):084801. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.084801.

Authors

A J Gonsalves¹, K Nakamura¹, J Daniels¹, C Benedetti¹, C Pieronek^{1

2}, T C H de Raadt¹, S Steinke¹, J H Bin¹, S S Bulanov¹, J van Tilborg¹, C G R Geddes¹, C B Schroeder^{1

2}, Cs Tóth¹, E Esarey¹, K Swanson^{1

2}, L Fan-Chiang^{1

2}, G Bagdasarov^{3

4}, N Bobrova^{3

5}, V Gasilov^{3

4}, G Korn⁶, P Sasorov^{3

6}, W P Leemans^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
² University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
³ Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics RAS, Moscow 125047, Russia.
⁴ National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow 115409, Russia.
⁵ Faculty of Nuclear Science and Physical Engineering, CTU in Prague, Brehova 7, Prague 1, Czech Republic.
⁶ Institute of Physics ASCR, v.v.i. (FZU), ELI-Beamlines Project, 182 21 Prague, Czech Republic.

PMID: 30932604
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.084801

Abstract

Guiding of relativistically intense laser pulses with peak power of 0.85 PW over 15 diffraction lengths was demonstrated by increasing the focusing strength of a capillary discharge waveguide using laser inverse bremsstrahlung heating. This allowed for the production of electron beams with quasimonoenergetic peaks up to 7.8 GeV, double the energy that was previously demonstrated. Charge was 5 pC at 7.8 GeV and up to 62 pC in 6 GeV peaks, and typical beam divergence was 0.2 mrad.