Improvements to laser wakefield accelerated electron beam stability, divergence, and energy spread using three-dimensional printed two-stage gas cell targets

Vargas, M. and Schumaker, W. and He, Z-H and Zhao, Z. and Behm, K. and Chvykov, V. and Hou, B. and Krushelnick, K. and Maksimchuk, A. and Yanovsky, V. and Thomas, A. G. R. (2014) Improvements to laser wakefield accelerated electron beam stability, divergence, and energy spread using three-dimensional printed two-stage gas cell targets. Applied Physics Letters, 104 (17): 174103. ISSN 0003-6951

Abstract

High intensity, short pulse lasers can be used to accelerate electrons to ultra-relativistic energies via laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) [T. Tajima and J. M. Dawson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 267 (1979)]. Recently, it was shown that separating the injection and acceleration processes into two distinct stages could prove beneficial in obtaining stable, high energy electron beams [Gonsalves et al., Nat. Phys. 7, 862 (2011); Liu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 035001 (2011); Pollock et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 045001 (2011)]. Here, we use a stereolithography based 3D printer to produce two-stage gas targets for LWFA experiments on the HERCULES laser system at the University of Michigan. We demonstrate substantial improvements to the divergence, pointing stability, and energy spread of a laser wakefield accelerated electron beam compared with a single-stage gas cell or gas jet target. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.