Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 16: Schwerionen- und lasererzeugte Plasmen I

P 16.1: Talk

Thursday, March 13, 2008, 16:30–16:45, 3D

Electron Acceleration in a Capillary — •Antonia Popp¹, Jens Osterhoff¹, Thomas Rowlands-Rees², Zsuzsanna Major^1,3, Matthias Fuchs^1,3, Benjamin Marx^1,3, Rainer Hörlein^1,3, Laszlo Veisz¹, Ulrich Schramm⁴, Stefan Becker³, Bernhard Hidding⁵, Georg Pretzler⁵, Dietrich Habs³, Florian Grüner¹, Ferenc Krausz^1,3, Simon Hooker², and Stefan Karsch¹ — ¹Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching, Germany — ²Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK — ³Lehrstuhl für experimentelle Kernphysik, Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München, Germany — ⁴Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Germany — ⁵Institut für Laser- und Plasmaphysik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany

Electron acceleration in a laser-driven plasma wakefield is a promising approach to reduce the size and costs of accelerating structures. Field gradients in plasmas can be on the TV/m scale and electron bunches are inherently ultrashort (theory predicts several femtoseconds). In the experiment described here the electron beam is generated by focusing 25 TW laser pulses into a gas-filled capillary discharge waveguide. Quasi-monoenergetic electron bunches with energies as high as 500 MeV can be detected, with features reaching up to 1 GeV, albeit with large shot-to-shot fluctuations. Alternatively, parameters can be optimized to provide highly stable electron beams but at lower energies. Low energy fluctuations and excellent pointing stability (2 mrad rms) render these electron bunches suitable for first experiments demonstrating XUV undulator radiation from laser accelerated electrons.