Augsburg 2006 – scientific programme
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K: Kurzzeitphysik
K 5: Licht- und Strahlungsquellen
K 5.2: Talk
Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 11:30–11:45, 1003
Time resolved study of THz transition radiation from a laser accelerated electron bunch — •S. Karsch1, Zs. Major1, J. Schreiber1, R. Hörlein1, K. Schmid1, L. Veisz1, U. Schramm1, S. Jamison2, J. Gallacher2, D. Jaroszinski2, K.-U. Amthor3, A. Debus3, B. Liesfeld3, H. Schwoerer3, R. Sauerbrey3, B. Hidding4, R. Heathcote5, P. Foster5, J. Collier5, C. D. Murphy6 und M. Kaluza6 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik — 2University of Strathclyde — 3Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena — 4Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf — 5Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, UK — 6Imperial College, London
Since the first experimental demonstration of monoenergetic, relativistic electron bunches from a laser-driven plasma accelerator, the emittance of these beams is of great interest for possible applications. While the transverse emittance can be inferred from a straightforward measurement of the beam divergence and calculations of the source size, the longitudinal or temporal emittance is more difficult to measure. Our approach is based on the temporal characterization of transition radiation (TR) emitted by the electron bunch when it crosses a thin metal foil. Since the TR emission is mainly in the THz spectral range, we employ an electro-optic method to encode the THz time structure on a chirped probe laser beam, which in turn is cross-correlated with a short reference pulse. We measured an upper limit for the single-shot electron bunch duration of shorter than 200 fs. This resolution is mainly dominated by effects in the electro-optic encoding technique. We will discuss alternative methods to improve the resolution towards the 10 fs regime.