Experimental Demonstration of Laser Guiding and Wakefield Acceleration in a Curved Plasma Channel

Xinzhe Zhu; Boyuan Li; Feng Liu; Jianlong Li; Zewu Bi; Xulei Ge; Hongyang Deng; Ziyang Zhang; Peilin Cui; Lin Lu; Wenchao Yan; Xiaohui Yuan; Liming Chen; Qiang Cao; Zhenyu Liu; Zhengming Sheng; Min Chen; Jie Zhang

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.215001

Experimental Demonstration of Laser Guiding and Wakefield Acceleration in a Curved Plasma Channel

Phys Rev Lett. 2023 May 26;130(21):215001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.215001.

Authors

Xinzhe Zhu¹, Boyuan Li^{1

2

3}, Feng Liu^{1

2}, Jianlong Li¹, Zewu Bi¹, Xulei Ge^{1

2}, Hongyang Deng⁴, Ziyang Zhang⁴, Peilin Cui⁵, Lin Lu^{1

2}, Wenchao Yan^{1

2}, Xiaohui Yuan^{1

2}, Liming Chen^{1

2}, Qiang Cao⁴, Zhenyu Liu⁵, Zhengming Sheng^{1

2

3}, Min Chen^{1

2}, Jie Zhang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (Ministry of Education), School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
³ Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
⁴ The Institute of Technological Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
⁵ School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.

PMID: 37295115
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.215001

Abstract

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.

MeSH terms

Acceleration*
Electrons*
Heart Rate
Lasers
Plasma