Novel Single-Shot Diagnostics for Electrons from Laser-Plasma Interaction at SPARC_LAB

Abstract

Nowadays, plasma wakefield acceleration is the most promising acceleration technique for compact and cheap accelerators, needed in several fields, e.g., novel compact light sources for industrial and medical applications. Indeed, the high electric field available in plasma structures (>100 GV/m) allows for accelerating electrons at the GeV energy scale in a few centimeters. Nevertheless, this approach still suffers from shot-to-shot instabilities, mostly related to experimental parameter fluctuations, e.g., laser intensity and plasma density. Therefore, single shot diagnostics are crucial in order to properly understand the acceleration mechanism. In this regard, at the SPARC_LAB Test Facility, we have developed two diagnostic tools to investigate properties of electrons coming from high intensity laser–matter interaction: one relying on Electro Optical Sampling (EOS) for the measurement of the temporal profile of the electric field carried by fast electrons generated by a high intensity laser hitting a solid target, the other one based on Optical Transition Radiation (OTR) for single shot measurements of the transverse emittance. In this work, the basic principles of both diagnostics will be presented as well as the experimental results achieved by means of the SPARC high brightness photo-injector and the high power laser FLAME.

Keywords

• high power laser
• single shot diagnostics
• electron diagnostics
• plasma wakefield acceleration