Physical Review X (Jun 2021)

Laser-Accelerated, Low-Divergence 15-MeV Quasimonoenergetic Electron Bunches at 1 kHz

  • F. Salehi,
  • M. Le,
  • L. Railing,
  • M. Kolesik,
  • H. M. Milchberg

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.021055
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 2
p. 021055

Abstract

Read online Read online

We demonstrate laser wakefield acceleration of quasimonoenergetic electron bunches up to 15 MeV at 1-kHz repetition rate with 2.5-pC charge per bunch and a core with <7-mrad beam divergence. Acceleration is driven by 5-fs, <2.7-mJ laser incident on a thin, near-critical-density hydrogen gas jet. Low beam divergence is attributed to reduced sensitivity to laser carrier-envelope phase slip, achieved in two ways using gas jet positon control and laser polarization: (i) electron injection into the wake on the gas jet’s plasma density downramp and (ii) use of circularly polarized drive pulses. These results demonstrate the generation of high-quality electron beams from a few-cycle-pulse-driven laser plasma accelerator without the need for carrier-envelope phase stabilization.