Laser wake acceleration in a plasma channel

Abstract: It is shown that if a laser pulse from the Center for Extreme Light Studies (Sarov) is used as a driver for a plasma wake accelerator, then, according to numerical simulation, an electron bunch with a charge of 50 pC can be accelerated to an energy of 100 GeV with an energy spread of less than 1%. In this case, it is required to produce a plasma channel 70 m long with a characteristic radius of 200 μm and a plasma density of 3×10¹⁵ cm^–3 on the axis. In a denser plasma, the acceleration rate is higher, but the acceleration length and the resulting energy are smaller. The accelerator parameters can be numerically optimised using a quasi-static model describing the laser pulse in terms of its envelope, which reduces the computation time by several orders of magnitude compared to complete models.

Keywords: laser acceleration, plasma channel, numerical simulation, plasma acceleration.