Advanced diagnostics

In the past sections, the basic diagnostic tools to measure the electron energy, charge, and divergence have been described. However, along with the rapid development of LWFA, also the demand for advanced diagnostics is increasing. First application experiments with LWFA produced electron beams, such as the generation of coherent X-ray beams from undulators [32] or Thomson scattering [137], or potentially also ultrafast electron diffraction [138], ask for a characterization of the transversal and longitudinal emittance, i.e., the transverse beam quality and the longitudinal profile / bunch duration. For the further development of LWFA it is also crucial to get more insight into the acceleration process itself, e.g., by visualizing the plasma wave itself [51, 52], if possible together with the injected electron bunch. The results on these advanced diagnostics are presented in chapter 4.

Chapter 3

Controlled injection of electrons into

wakefields

The theoretical concepts and the basic experimental setup have been introduced in chapters 1 and 2. Now, the experimental results on electron acceleration with different injection mechanisms are presented. Sec. 3.1 is focused on the results obtained with LWS-20 (65 mJ on target, 8 fs) and the self-injection process. A comparison to the previously obtained results with LWS-10 (35 mJ on target, 8 fs) by Schmid et al. is given [57, 122]. Sec. 3.2 shows how the accelerator output was stabilized via controlled injection of electrons at a sharp density transition. Due to the high quality electron bunches obtained here, this method was also used in combination with the ATLAS laser (1 J on target, 26 fs), where bunches with even higher energy and charge could be produced (see sec. 3.3).

3.1

LWFA with LWS-20 in the self-injection regime

In the previous experiments performed with LWS-10, i.e., LWS-20 before the energy- doubling upgrade, it was shown that electron bunches with around 25 MeV could be ob- tained with only 35 mJ on target in the self-injection regime [122]. Single shots up to 50 MeV were observed, but the accelerator output suffered strong instabilities. Typically, only few percent of the laser shots produced high quality electron bunches. The results suggested that the instabilities are mainly caused by the fluctuations of the laser param- eters. Since the focused intensity was just at the threshold for the self-injection regime, short series of consecutive shots with similar parameters could only be produced at lower energies, typically 8-15 MeV.

Now, these experiments were repeated in the same setup with the upgraded laser. The 8 fs output pulses of LWS-20 were focused onto a supersonic He gas jet, typically with

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 00 20 40 60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 C h a rg e (p C /Me V)

Electron energy (MeV)

20 -20 mrad

+

Charge (arb. u.)

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

Figure 3.1:High energy series of self-injected electrons with LWS-20. False color image of the detected charge on the scintillating screen and lineouts integrated in the angular (vertical) direction of 10 consecutive laser shots. The charge in the high energy peaks is around 1-2 pC, the FWHM divergence about 5 mrad. The lineouts are offset vertically to fit the corresponding scintillator image.

3.1 LWFA with LWS-20 in the self-injection regime 67

Charge (arb. u.)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 00 10 20 30 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 _{26.3 MeV} 12.2 pC 26.2 MeV 12.3 pC 24.5 MeV 11.7 pC 28.5 MeV 3.62 pC 28.8 MeV 5.12 pC 27.3 MeV 7.58 pC 27.4 MeV 5.72 pC 29.7 MeV 5.38 pC 29.5 MeV 2.18 pC 25.8 MeV 2.83 pC 29.8 MeV 5.58 pC 26.9 MeV 3.88 pC 27.4 MeV 1.43 pC 28.3 MeV 3.93 pC 26 MeV 1.82 pC 27.2 MeV 0.841 pC 27.4 MeV 1.99 pC 30.3 MeV 4.38 pC 28.6 MeV 4.56 pC 25.8 MeV 0.643 pC

Electron energy (MeV)

C h a rg e (p C /Me V)

Charge (arb. u.)

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

20 -20 mrad +

Figure 3.2: Stable series of self-injected electrons with LWS-20. False color image of the de- tected charge on the scintillating screen and lineouts integrated in the angular (vertical) direction of 20 consecutive laser shots. The lineouts are offset vertically to fit the corresponding scintillator image. Statistics for the 500 shots of this run: Epeak = (27.7±2.1) MeV,∆E = (5.7±2.6) MeV

300-500 µm diameter. Due to a strongly modulated laser beam profile and maybe also residual phase front distortions, about 50 % of the laser energy was scattered into the wings of the focal spot. Thus, about 25 % of the energy are within the FHWM, leading to an intensity of 2.5·1018W/cm2(see sec. 2.1.1 for details). Figure 3.1 shows the accelerator output from 10 consecutive laser shots. Here, the parameters (ne = 2.6·1019cm−3) have

been chosen to reach the maximum electron energy. Some peaks in the electron energy spectrum with∼70 MeV are visible, which is about 40 % more compared to the previous results before the laser upgrade. This amount of energy increase due to a doubling in laser power agrees with the expected value from the scaling laws (sec. 1.9). However, as it is already visible in the figure, the accelerator output is very unstable at these operating conditions. Only a small percentage of the shots show a nice peak in the electron energy spectrum, typically it is accompanied by a much larger number of low energy electrons with a larger divergence.

The quality of the accelerator output could be increased significantly by tuning the parameters to lower electron energy. Fig. 3.2 shows a series of 20 consecutive shots obtained at ne = 3.6· 1019 cm−3 with carefully optimized parameters. Monoenergetic

electron bunches are generated in 90 % of the shots with a peak energy of 25-30 MeV, but rather large charge fluctuations. This observation of stable electrons with self-injection is similar to the findings in Schmid [122], where it was also shown that stable operation can be achieved at lower electron energies. Similar to the comparison of the highest energy shots, the electron energy for stable operation has also increased by about 50 % due to the increased laser energy.

Although this series shows a great improvement compared to the previous results ob- tained with LWS-10, the fluctuations in the electron parameters, especially the injected charge, could not be removed completely. Additionally, the shots typically show a rather broad energy distribution. The fluctuations are mainly attributed to fluctuations in the laser parameters (energy, spectrum, pulse duration, focus quality) as also suggested by Schmid [122], but other influences, e.g. the exact gas density, are imaginable, too.

The key element for stable or unstable electron acceleration is the injection of back- ground plasma electrons into the plasma wave. The self-injection process used so far is highly nonlinear with the laser intensity, thus even small local fluctuations will lead to big instabilities. Reproducible accelerator operation with similar high-quality electron bunches in>90 % of the laser shots apparently requires a degree of stability of all parame- ters, which is not realistic in the current setup. Therefore, an advanced scheme of electron injection into wakefields utilizing a sharp density transition is described in next sections. In this scheme, the injection is less dependent on the laser intensity, which leads to more stable accelerator operation. Additionally, the new injection scheme allows for much eas- ier tuning of the electron energy, a parameter with very limited and indirect control in the