Focus on Laser- and Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators

New Journal of Physics, 2010

The ability of short but intense laser pulses to generate high-energy electrons and ions from gaseous and solid targets has been well known since the early days of the laser fusion program. However, during the past decade there has been an explosion of experimental and theoretical activity in this area of laser-matter interaction, driven by the prospect of realizing table-top plasma accelerators for research, medical and industrial uses, and also relatively small and inexpensive plasma accelerators for high-energy physics at the frontier of particle physics. In this focus issue on laser-and beam-driven plasma accelerators, the latest advances in this field are described.

Nature Physics, 2008

Rapid progress in the development of high-intensity laser systems has extended our ability to study light-matter interactions far into the relativistic domain, in which electrons are driven to velocities close to the speed of light. As well as being of fundamental interest in their own right, these interactions enable the generation of high-energy particle beams that are short, bright and have good spatial quality. Along with steady improvements in the size, cost and repetition rate of high-intensity lasers, the unique characteristics of laser-driven particle beams are expected to be useful for a wide range of contexts, including proton therapy for the treatment of cancers, materials characterization, radiation-driven chemistry, border security through the detection of explosives, narcotics and other dangerous substances, and of course high-energy particle physics. Here, we review progress that has been made towards realizing such possibilities and the principles that underlie them.

IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 2000

Nature, 2004

Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 2004

Studies of charged-particle acceleration processes remain one of the most important areas of research in laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas. In this paper, we present the underlying physics and the present status of high gradient and high energy plasma accelerators. We will focus on the acceleration of charged particles to relativistic energies by plasma waves that are created by intense laser and particle beams. The generation of relativistic plasma waves by intense lasers or electron beams in plasmas is important in the quest for producing ultra-high acceleration gradients for accelerators. With the development of compact short pulse high brightness lasers and electron positron beams, new areas of studies for laser/particle beam-matter interactions is opening up. A number of methods are being pursued vigorously to achieve ultrahigh acceleration gradients. These include the plasma beat wave accelerator mechanism, which uses conventional long pulse (∼100 ps) modest intensity lasers (I ∼ 10 14-10 16 W cm −2), the laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA), which uses the new breed of compact high brightness lasers (<1 ps) and intensities >10 18 W cm −2 , the self-modulated LWFA concept, which combines elements of stimulated Raman forward scattering, and electron acceleration by nonlinear plasma waves excited by relativistic electron and positron bunches. In the ultra-high intensity regime, laser/particle beam-plasma interactions are highly nonlinear and relativistic, leading to new phenomena such as the plasma wakefield excitation for particle acceleration, relativistic self-focusing and guiding of laser beams, high-harmonic generation, acceleration of electrons, positrons, protons and photons. Fields greater than 1 GV cm −1 have been generated with particles being accelerated to 200 MeV over a distance of millimetre. Plasma wakefields driven by positron beams at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center facility have accelerated the tail of the positron beam. In the near future, laser plasma accelerators will be producing GeV particles.

2018

IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science

Physics of Plasmas, 2001

As tabletop lasers continue to reach record levels of peak power, the interaction of light with matter has crossed a new threshold, in which plasma electrons at the laser focus oscillate at relativistic velocities. The highest forces ever exerted by light have been used to accelerate beams of electrons and protons to energies of a million volts in distances of only microns. Not only is this acceleration gradient up to a thousand times greater than in radio-frequency-based sources, but the transverse emittance of the particle beams is comparable or lower. Additionally, laser-based accelerators have been demonstrated to work at a repetition rate of 10 Hz, an improvement of a factor of 1000 over their best performance of just a couple of years ago. Anticipated improvements in energy spread may allow these novel compact laser-based radiation sources to be useful someday for cancer radiotherapy and as injectors into conventional accelerators, which are critical tools for x-ray and nuclear physics research. They might also be used as a spark to ignite controlled thermonuclear fusion. The ultrashort pulse duration of these particle bursts and the x rays they can produce, hold great promise as well to resolve chemical, biological or physical reactions on ultrafast ͑femtosecond͒ time scales and on the spatial scale of atoms. Even laser-accelerated protons are soon expected to become relativistic. The dense electron-positron plasmas and vast array of nuclear reactions predicted to occur in this case might even help bring astrophysical phenomena down to Earth, into university laboratories. This paper reviews the many recent advances in this emerging discipline, called high-field science. new field of physics, known as high-field science. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to be restricted to a discussion of some of the highlights, mainly over the last 5 years, in the relativistic regime of laser-plasma interactions. Several reviews have already been published on highintensity laser development and applications, 2-4 relativistic nonlinear optics, 4,5 laser accelerators, 6 and intense laserplasma interactions. The paper is organized as follows. A brief basic theoretical overview of relativistic laser-plasmas interactions, with references only to early work, is presented in Sec. II. Recent results and references to more recent theoretical and numerical work are discussed in Sec. III A; experimental results are presented in Sec. III B. Prospects and applications are reviewed in Sec. IV.

2009

Compared to conventional particle accelerators, plasmas can sustain accelerating fields that are thousands of times higher. To exploit this ability, massively parallel SciDAC particle simulations provide physical insight into the development of next-generation accelerators that use laserdriven plasma waves. These plasma-based accelerators offer a path to more compact, ultra-fast particle and radiation sources for probing the subatomic world, for studying new materials and new technologies, and for medical applications.

Nature, 2016