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Quasi-monoenergetic laser-plasma acceleration of electrons to 2 GeV

2013; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/ncomms2988

2041-1723

Xiaoming Wang, Rafal Zgadzaj, N. Fazel, Zhengyan Li, S. A. Yi, Xi Zhang, W. Henderson, Yen-Yu Chang, R. Korzekwa, Hai-En Tsai, Chih-Hao Pai, Hernan Quevedo, G. Dyer, E. Gaul, M. Martinez, Aaron Bernstein, Teddy Borger, M. Spinks, M. Donovan, Vladimir Khudik, G. Shvets, T. Ditmire, M. C. Downer,

Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques

Laser-plasma accelerators of only a centimetre's length have produced nearly monoenergetic electron bunches with energy as high as 1 GeV. Scaling these compact accelerators to multi-gigaelectronvolt energy would open the prospect of building X-ray free-electron lasers and linear colliders hundreds of times smaller than conventional facilities, but the 1 GeV barrier has so far proven insurmountable. Here, by applying new petawatt laser technology, we produce electron bunches with a spectrum prominently peaked at 2 GeV with only a few per cent energy spread and unprecedented sub-milliradian divergence. Petawatt pulses inject ambient plasma electrons into the laser-driven accelerator at much lower density than was previously possible, thereby overcoming the principal physical barriers to multi-gigaelectronvolt acceleration: dephasing between laser-driven wake and accelerating electrons and laser pulse erosion. Simulations indicate that with improvements in the laser-pulse focus quality, acceleration to nearly 10 GeV should be possible with the available pulse energy.