The Effect of Laser Focusing Conditions on Propagation and Monoenergetic Electron Productio.pdf

a r X i v : p h y s i c s / 0 7 0 1 1 8 6 v 1 [ p h y s i c s .p l a s m - p h ] 1 6 J a n 2 0 0 7 The Effect of Laser Focusing Conditions on Propagation and Monoenergetic Electron Production in Laser Wakefield Accelerators A. G. R. Thomas1, Z. Najmudin1, S. P. D. Mangles1, C. D. Murphy1,2, A. E. Dangor1, C. Kamperidis1, K.L. Lancaster2, W. B. Mori3, P. A. Norreys2, W. Rozmus4, and K. Krushelnick1 1Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK 2Central Laser Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Oxon, OX11 0QX, UK 3Dept. of Physics and Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095 and 4Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada The effect of laser focusing conditions on the evolution of relativistic plasma waves in laser wake- field accelerators is studied both experimentally and with particle-in-cell simulations. For short focal length (w0 λp) interactions, beam break-up prevents stable propagation of the pulse. High field gradients lead to non-localized phase injection of electrons, and thus broad energy spread beams. However for long focal length geometries (w0 λp), a single optical filament can capture the ma- jority of the laser energy, and self-guide over distances comparable to the dephasing length, even for these short-pulses (cτ ≈ λp). This allows the wakefield to evolve to the correct shape for the production of the monoenergetic electron bunches, as measured in the experiment. PACS numbers: The concept of using lasers to accelerate particles to relativistic energies in plasma [1] has been brought closer to practical realization by recent experimental results. These have demonstrated the production of relativis- tic electron beams with high energies [2, 3], low energy spread [4, 5, 6] and low emittance [7]. These accelera- tors promise to revolutionise the many uses of such par- ticle beams, due to their high accelerating fields and thus compact size. Of the n