Electron bunch injection at an angle into a laser wakefield

Luttikhof, M.J.H. and Khachatryan, A.G. and Goor van, F.A. and Boller, K.-J. and Mora, P. (2009) Electron bunch injection at an angle into a laser wakefield. Laser and Particle Beams, 27 . pp. 69-77. ISSN 0263-0346

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Abstract:	External injection of electron bunches longer than the plasma wavelength in a laser wakefield accelerator can lead to the generation of femtosecond ultra relativistic bunches with a couple of percent energy spread. Extensive study has been done on external electron bunch (e.g., one generated by a photo-cathode RF linac) injection in a laser wakefield for different configurations. In this paper, we investigate a new way of external injection where the electron bunch is injected at a small angle into the wakefield. This way one can avoid the ponderomotive scattering as well as the vacuum-plasma transition region, which tend to destroy the injected bunch. In our simulations, the effect of the laser pulse dynamics is also taken into account. It is shown that injection at an angle can provide compressed and accelerated electron bunches with less than 2% energy spread. Another advantage of this scheme is that it has less stringent requirements in terms of the size of the injected bunch and there is the potential to trap more charge
Item Type:	Article
Copyright:	© 2009 Cambrige University Press
Faculty:	Science and Technology (TNW)
Research Group:	Laser Physics and Nonlinear Optics (LPNO)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/60706
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263034609000093
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