Speaker
Jerome Faure
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/I3.007.pdf
Laser driven electron acceleration with high repetition rate lasers:
from plasma physics to condensed matter applications
Jérôme Faure
LOA, ENSTA-CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France
Laser wakefield acceleration is an emerging technique for accelerating electron bunches to
relativistic energies in very short distances using ultra-intense laser pulses. It relies on the
excitation of an intense plasma wave, or wakefield, that is able to trap and accelerate
electrons in a single arch of the wakefield, thereby generating femtosecond relativistic
electron bunches. Because of their extremely short duration and natural synchronization
with the laser pulse, these electron bunches are of great interest for probing matter on
femtosecond time scales via pump-probe experiments, possibly offering unprecedented
temporal resolutions for studies in structural dynamics in condensed matter [1]. Such
applications require high stability, massive data averaging and would therefore benefit
greatly from a high repetition rate electron source.
In this context, our group has started the further miniaturization of laser-plasma
accelerators by using small-scale and high-repetition rate lasers. In this talk, we will review
the recent development of these kilohertz laser-plasma source [2]. In initial experiments,
electrons reached 100 keV energy. The enhanced stability and high repetition rate allowed
us to perform ultrafast electron diffraction experiments in which the dynamics of a Silicon
lattice could be revealed on the picosecond time scale [3]. In more recent experiments, we
have used laser pulses composed of a single optical cycle (3.5-fs duration) in order to drive
the plasma wakefield resonantly. This led to an increase of the energy and the charge by
two orders of magnitude, and the electron beams now reach 5 MeV energy with >10 pC
charge [4]. We will discuss the physics of the laser plasma interaction, the potential of this
new source for applications as well as future foreseen developments.
[1] J. Faure et al., Phys. Rev. Acc. & Beams 19, 021302 (2016)
[2] B. Beaurepaire et al., Phys. Rev. X 5 031012 (2015). He et al., New. J. Phys. 15, 053016 (2013)
[3] He et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. vol. 102, 064104 (2013). He et al., Scientific Report 6, 36224 (2016).
[4] D. Guénot et al., Nature Photonics 11, 293 (2017). D. Gustas et al., accepted to Phys. Rev. Acc. & Beams
