Speaker
Description
Self-waveguiding of petawatt-scale laser pulses in optical field ionized (OFI) plasma waveguides has opened a new era in multi-GeV laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) of electrons. As these waveguides possess mode structure, details of coupling of the LWFA drive pulse into the waveguide are consequential to the acceleration process. This talk presents results from experiments at L-ALEPH in which the use of plasma waveguides with entrance funnels, generated with custom UMD diffractive optics, enhanced coupling to improve electron repeatability and charge with reduced sensitivity to laser misalignment and pointing fluctuations. Additional experiments show that the guiding of intense higher-order modes produces electron beams with corresponding spatial structure.
| Working group | WG1 |
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