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Generation of quasi-monoenergetic electron beams using ultrashort and ultraintense laser pulses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2005

Y. GLINEC ,
J. FAURE ,
A. PUKHOV ,
S. KISELEV ,
S. GORDIENKO ,
B. MERCIER  and
V. MALKA
Y. GLINEC
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, Ecole Polytechnique, ENSTA, CNRS, UMR, Palaiseau, France
J. FAURE
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, Ecole Polytechnique, ENSTA, CNRS, UMR, Palaiseau, France
A. PUKHOV
Affiliation:
Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Heinrich-Heine-Universitat Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany
S. KISELEV
Affiliation:
Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Heinrich-Heine-Universitat Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany
S. GORDIENKO
Affiliation:
Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Heinrich-Heine-Universitat Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany
B. MERCIER
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, Ecole Polytechnique, ENSTA, CNRS, UMR, Palaiseau, France
V. MALKA
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, Ecole Polytechnique, ENSTA, CNRS, UMR, Palaiseau, France
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Abstract

Plasma-based accelerators have been proposed for the next generation of compact accelerators because of the huge electric fields they can support. However, it has been difficult to use them efficiently for applications because they produce poor quality particle beams with large energy spreads. Here, we demonstrate a dramatic enhancement in the quality of electron beams produced in laser-plasma interaction: an ultrashort laser pulse drives a plasma bubble which traps and accelerates plasma electrons to a single energy. This produces an extremely collimated and quasi-monoenergetic electron beam with a high charge of 0.5 nanocoulomb at energy 170 ± 20 MeV.

Keywords

Laser-plasma acceleratorMonoenergetic electron beamUltrashort electron beamUltrashort laser-plasma interaction
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 161 - 166
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper was presented at the 28th ECLIM conference in Rome, Italy.

References

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