Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (Ministry of Education), School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2023 May 26;130(21):215001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.215001.
Curved plasma channels have been proposed to guide intense lasers for various applications, such as x-ray laser emission, compact synchrotron radiation, and multistage laser wakefield acceleration [e.g. J. Luo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 154801 (2018)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.120.154801]. Here, a carefully designed experiment shows evidences of intense laser guidance and wakefield acceleration in a centimeter-scale curved plasma channel. Both experiments and simulations indicate that when the channel curvature radius is gradually increased and the laser incidence offset is optimized, the transverse oscillation of the laser beam can be mitigated, and the stably guided laser pulse excites wakefields and accelerates electrons along the curved plasma channel to a maximum energy of 0.7 GeV. Our results also show that such a channel exhibits good potential for seamless multistage laser wakefield acceleration.
弯曲等离子体通道被提议用于引导强激光，用于各种应用，例如 X 射线激光发射、紧凑型同步辐射和多级激光尾场加速[例如 J. Luo 等人，Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 154801 (2018)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.120.154801]。在这里，一个精心设计的实验表明在厘米级弯曲等离子体通道中存在强激光引导和尾场加速的证据。实验和模拟都表明，当通道曲率半径逐渐增加且激光入射偏移优化时，激光束的横向振荡可以得到缓解，稳定引导的激光脉冲会激发尾场，并沿着弯曲的等离子体通道加速电子，最大能量达到 0.7GeV。我们的结果还表明，这种通道在无缝多级激光尾场加速方面具有良好的潜力。
