No Arabic abstract
Though wakefield acceleration in crystal channels has been previously proposed, x-ray wakefield acceleration has only recently become a realistic possibility since the invention of the single-cycled optical laser compression technique. We investigate the acceleration due to a wakefield induced by a coherent, ultrashort x-ray pulse guided by a nanoscale channel inside a solid material. By two-dimensional particle in- cell computer simulations, we show that an acceleration gradient of TeV/cm is attainable. This is about 3 orders of magnitude stronger than that of the conventional plasma-based wakefield accelerations, which implies the possibility of an extremely compact scheme to attain ultrahigh energies. In addition to particle acceleration, this scheme can also induce the emission of high energy photons at ~O(10-100) MeV. Our simulations confirm such high energy photon emissions, which is in contrast with that induced by the optical laser driven wakefield scheme. In addition to this, the significantly improved emittance of the energetic electrons has been discussed.
Total charge and energy evaluations for the electron beams generated in the laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) is the primary step in the determination of the required target and laser parameters. Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations is an efficient numerical tool that can provide such evaluations unless the effect of numerical dispersion is not diminished. The numerical dispersion, which is specific for the PIC modeling, affects not only the dephasing lengths in LWFA but also the total amount of the self-injected electrons. A numerical error of the order of $10^{-4}-10^{-3}$ in the calculation of the speed of light results in a significant error in the total injected charge and energy gain of the accelerated electron bunches. In the standard numerical approach, the numerical correction of the speed of light either requires infinitely small spatial grid resolution (which needs large computation platform) or force to compromise with the numerical accuracy. A simple and easy to implement numerical scheme is shown to suppress the numerical dispersion of the electromagnetic pulse in PIC simulations even with a modest spatial resolution, and without any special treatments to the core structure of the numerical algorithm. Evaluated charges of the self-injected electron bunches become essentially lower owing to the better calculations of the wake phase velocity.
The multi-stage technique for laser driven acceleration of electrons become a critical part of full-optical, jitter-free accelerators. Use of several independent laser drivers and shorter length plasma targets allows the stable and reproducible acceleration of electron bunches (or beam) in the GeV energies with lower energy spreads. At the same time the charge coupling, necessary for efficient acceleration in the consecutive acceleration stage(s), depends collectively on the parameters of the injected electron beam, the booster stage, and the non-linear transverse dynamics of the electron beam in the laser pulse wake. An unmatched electron beam injected in the booster stage(s), and its non-linear transverse evolution may result in perturbation and even reduction of the field strength in the acceleration phase of the wakefield. Analysis and characterization of charge coupling in multi-stage laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) become ultimately important. Here, we investigate two-stage LWFA via fully relativistic multi-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, and underlying the most critical parameters, which affect the efficient coupling and acceleration of the electron beam in the booster stage.
Particle in Cell (PIC) simulations are a widely used tool for the investigation of both laser- and beam-driven plasma acceleration. It is a known issue that the beam quality can be artificially degraded by numerical Cherenkov radiation (NCR) resulting primarily from an incorrectly modeled dispersion relation. Pseudo-spectral solvers featuring infinite order stencils can strongly reduce NCR, or even suppress it, and are therefore well suited to correctly model the beam properties. For efficient parallelization of the PIC algorithm, however, localized solvers are inevitable. Arbitrary order pseudo-spectral methods provide this needed locality. Yet, these methods can again be prone to NCR. Here, we show that acceptably low solver orders are sufficient to correctly model the physics of interest, while allowing for parallel computation by domain decomposition.
We herein investigate shock formation and particle acceleration processes for both protons and electrons in a quasi-parallel high-Mach-number collisionless shock through a long-term, large-scale particle-in-cell simulation. We show that both protons and electrons are accelerated in the shock and that these accelerated particles generate large-amplitude Alfv{e}nic waves in the upstream region of the shock. After the upstream waves have grown sufficiently, the local structure of the collisionless shock becomes substantially similar to that of a quasi-perpendicular shock due to the large transverse magnetic field of the waves. A fraction of protons are accelerated in the shock with a power-law-like energy distribution. The rate of proton injection to the acceleration process is approximately constant, and in the injection process, the phase-trapping mechanism for the protons by the upstream waves can play an important role. The dominant acceleration process is a Fermi-like process through repeated shock crossings of the protons. This process is a `fast process in the sense that the time required for most of the accelerated protons to complete one cycle of the acceleration process is much shorter than the diffusion time. A fraction of the electrons is also accelerated by the same mechanism, and have a power-law-like energy distribution. However, the injection does not enter a steady state during the simulation, which may be related to the intermittent activity of the upstream waves. Upstream of the shock, a fraction of the electrons is pre-accelerated before reaching the shock, which may contribute to steady electron injection at a later time.
The E-310 experiment at the Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests II (FACET-II) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory aims to demonstrate the creation of high brightness beams from a plasma photocathode. Betatron radiation will be measured by a Compton spectrometer, currently under development at UCLA, to provide single-shot, nondestructive beam diagnostics. We give a brief overview of this spectrometer as well as double differential spectrum reconstruction from the spectrometer image and beam parameter reconstruction from this double differential spectrum. We discuss three models for betatron radiation: an idealized particle tracking code which computes radiation from Lienard-Wiechert potentials, a quasi-static particle-in-cell (PIC) code which computes radiation from Lienard-Wiechert potentials, and a full PIC code which computes radiation using a Monte Carlo QED method. Spectra computed by the three models for a simple case are compared.