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Near-GeV Acceleration of Electrons by a Nonlinear Plasma Wave Driven by a Self-Guided Laser Pulse

2009; American Physical Society; Volume: 103; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.103.035002

1092-0145

S. Kneip, S. R. Nagel, S. F. Martins, S. P. D. Mangles, C. Bellei, O. Chekhlov, R. J. Clarke, Nicolas Delerue, E. J. Divall, G. Doucas, Klaus Ertel, Frederico Fiúza, Ricardo Fonseca, P. S. Foster, Sarah Hawkes, C. J. Hooker, K. Krushelnick, W. B. Mori, C. A. J. Palmer, K. Ta Phuoc, P. P. Rajeev, J. Schreiber, M. J. V. Streeter, D. Urner, J. Vieira, L. O. Silva, Z. Najmudin,

Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications

The acceleration of electrons to approximately 0.8 GeV has been observed in a self-injecting laser wakefield accelerator driven at a plasma density of 5.5x10(18) cm(-3) by a 10 J, 55 fs, 800 nm laser pulse in the blowout regime. The laser pulse is found to be self-guided for 1 cm (>10zR), by measurement of a single filament containing >30% of the initial laser energy at this distance. Three-dimensional particle in cell simulations show that the intensity within the guided filament is amplified beyond its initial focused value to a normalized vector potential of a0>6, thus driving a highly nonlinear plasma wave.