New injection and acceleration scheme of positrons in the laser-plasma bubble regime

Abstract

A novel approach for positron injection and acceleration in the laser driven plasma wakefield is proposed. One ring-shaped beam and one coaxially propagating Gaussian beam drive wakefields in a preformed plasma volume filled with both electrons and positrons. The laser’s ponderomotive force as well as the charge separation force in the front bucket of the first bubble are utilized to provide the transverse momenta of injected positrons and those positrons can be trapped by the focusing field and then accelerated by the wakefield. Theoretical analysis of the process is presented and verified by particle-in-cell simulations. The simulations show that relatively high-charge, quasimonoenergetic positron beams can be obtained.