The laser wake-field accelerator (LWFA) traditionally produces high brightness, quasi-monoenergetic electron beams with Gaussian-like spatial and angular distributions. In the present work we investigate the generation of ultra-relativistic beams with ring-like structures in the blowout regime of the LWFA using a dual stage accelerator. A density down-ramp triggers injection after the first stage and is used to produce ring-like electron spectra in the 300 - 600 MeV energy range. These well defined, annular beams are observed simultaneously with the on-axis, high energy electron beams, with a divergence of a few milliradians. The rings have quasi-monoenergetic energy spectra with an RMS spread estimated to be less than 5%. Particle-in-cell simulations confirm that off-axis injection provides the electrons with the initial transverse momentum necessary to undertake distinct betatron oscillations within the plasma bubble during their acceleration process.
The Laboratory for Intense Lasers (L2I) facility is equipped with a multi-Terawatt Ti:sapphire-Nd:glass chirped pulse amplification laser system delivering 2.8 TW pulses at 1053 nm. Here we present the laser configuration and characterize its current performance, and describe the diagnostics and methods used for this characterization.
KEYWORDS: Laser systems engineering, Pulsed laser operation, Interferometry, Oscillators, Spectroscopy, Calibration, Diffraction gratings, Control systems, High power lasers, Crystals
We present a device for spectral phase pulse diagnosis assembled to optimize and control pulse compression in our chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser system at Laboratorio de Lasers Intensos (L2I). The device uses the spectral interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) technique and, together with a pulse spectral intensity acquisition, allows the complete temporal and spectral characterization of the pulses. Using the device and our own real-time software we successfully optimized the compression and characterized the final terawatt pulses. We also describe here a new simple interferometric method to directly measure a calibration constant of the SPIDER setup and control the temporal overlapping of the two replicas and chirped pulse in SPIDER. A study is presented that allows the measure of chirps in pulses far above the normally accepted dispersion limit of a SPIDER diagnosis.
Angular dispersion of the signal beam inside the nonlinear media is taken into account to improve the non-collinear phase-matching range. Simulations ran for BBO, LBO and KDP crystals predict that bandwitdth increase is possible for most of the application spectral range and that is can surpass one order of magnitude in some particular configurations.
New results from the interaction of ultra short laser pulses with ionization fronts are presented. The frequency up- shifts, due to photon acceleration, were obtained in a co- and counter propagation scheme. The different levels of frequency up-shift observed give us not only the overall plasma density but also information about the fine structure of the ionization font. The correlation between the interaction lengths for co- and counter-propagation, with the longitudinal and transverse dimensions of the ionization front is also discussed. Those result clearly show the capability of using photon acceleration phenomena to fully characterize a relativistic ionization front.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.