A laser-plasma accelerator producing monoenergetic electron beams
A laser-plasma accelerator producing monoenergetic electron beams
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DOI：
10.1038/nature02963
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发表时间：
2004-09-30
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Malka, V
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Faure, J;Glinec, Y;Malka, V
粒子加速器被广泛应用于各种领域，从医学和生物学到高能物理学。传统加速器中的加速场被限制在几十MeV m（-1），这是由于结构壁处的材料击穿。因此，高能粒子束的产生目前需要大型加速器和昂贵的基础设施。激光等离子体加速器（1）由于其可以维持巨大的电场（2-5）（> 100 GeV m（-1））而被提议作为下一代紧凑型加速器。然而，由于电子在相空间中的随机化，它们产生了具有大能量扩展（2-10）的质量差的粒子束，因此难以有效地将它们用于应用。在这里，我们证明，这种随机化可以被抑制，电子束的质量可以显着提高。在3 mm的长度内，激光驱动捕获和加速等离子体电子的等离子体气泡（11）。由此产生的电子束是非常准直和准单能的，在170 MeV下具有0.5 nC的高电荷。
Particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of fields, ranging from medicine and biology to high-energy physics. The accelerating fields in conventional accelerators are limited to a few tens of MeV m(-1), owing to material breakdown at the walls of the structure. Thus, the production of energetic particle beams currently requires large-scale accelerators and expensive infrastructures. Laser - plasma accelerators(1) have been proposed as a next generation of compact accelerators because of the huge electric fields they can sustain(2-5) (> 100 GeV m(-1)). However, it has been difficult to use them efficiently for applications because they have produced poor-quality particle beams with large energy spreads(2-10), owing to a randomization of electrons in phase space. Here we demonstrate that this randomization can be suppressed and that the quality of the electron beams can be dramatically enhanced. Within a length of 3 mm, the laser drives a plasma bubble(11) that traps and accelerates plasma electrons. The resulting electron beam is extremely collimated and quasi-monoenergetic, with a high charge of 0.5 nC at 170 MeV.