Decoding Sources of Energy Variability in a Laser-Plasma Accelerator

oleh: Andreas R. Maier, Niels M. Delbos, Timo Eichner, Lars Hübner, Sören Jalas, Laurids Jeppe, Spencer W. Jolly, Manuel Kirchen, Vincent Leroux, Philipp Messner, Matthias Schnepp, Maximilian Trunk, Paul A. Walker, Christian Werle, Paul Winkler

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: American Physical Society 2020-08-01

Deskripsi

Laser-plasma acceleration promises compact sources of high-brightness relativistic electron beams. However, the limited stability often associated with laser-plasma acceleration has previously prevented a detailed mapping of the drive laser and electron performance and represents a major obstacle towards advancing laser-plasma acceleration for applications. Here, we correlate drive laser and electron-beam parameters with high statistics to identify and quantify sources of electron energy drift and jitter. Based on our findings, we provide a parametrization to predict the electron energy drift with subpercent accuracy for many hours from measured laser parameters, which opens a path for performance improvements by active stabilization. Our results are enabled by the first stable 24-h operation of a laser-plasma accelerator and the statistics from 100 000 consecutive electron beams, which, by itself, marks an important milestone.