Mangles, Stuart P. D. and Thomas, Alexander George Roy and Kaluza, M. C. and Lundh, Olle and Lindau, Filip and Persson, A. and Najmudin, Zulfikar and Wahlstrom, C.-G. and Murphy, C. D. and Kamperidis, Christos and Lancaster, Katherine L. and Divall, E. J. and Krushelnick, Karl (2006) Effect of laser contrast ratio on electron beam stability in laser wakefield acceleration experiments. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 48 (12B). ISSN 0741-3335
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Laser wakefield accelerators offer the possibility of compact electron acceleration. However one of the key outstanding issues with the results reported to date is the electron beam stability. Experiments on two laser systems reveal that the contrast ratio between the ASE pedestal and main pulse is an important factor in determining the quality of the electron beam. With a high contrast ratio (108) the electron beam profile is a well collimated single beam having a low pointing instability (<10 mrad rms). With a lower contrast (106) the beam profile contains multiple beamlets which exhibit a large pointing instability (sime50 mrad rms). A high contrast ratio not only improves the beam pointing stability (sime6 mrad) but also stabilizes the electron beam energy reproducibility (5%).