Beam Manipulation of Laser-Plasma Accelerated Beams for Advanced Accelerator and Radiation Source Applications

等离子体加速是利用与等离子体结构相关的电场（如电子等离子体波）加速带电粒子（如电子）的尖端技术。等离子体结构是使用超短激光脉冲或粒子束创建的。这种技术提供了一种方法来建立高性能的粒子加速器的尺寸比传统的加速器技术小得多。该奖项将进一步发展激光等离子体加速器（LPA）。LPA电子束的应用需要在等离子体加速器的出口之后捕获、传输和操纵电子束。该奖项将研究等离子体加速器之后对未来应用至关重要的束流动力学的两个方面：1。将LPA光束耦合到传统的光束传输系统中。2.光束解压缩，使光源的应用。这项工作将有利于大多数应用的LPA光束，特别是高能物理和光源的应用。用于粒子物理应用的高能粒子束的产生需要多个LPA的分段，并且所提出的研究将直接影响级之间的LPA束耦合系统的设计。LPA驱动的自由电子激光器（FEL）被认为是LPA技术最有前途的近期应用之一，这项研究将为LPA驱动的自由电子激光器产生相干、高峰值亮度X射线的首次原理验证奠定基础。该奖项的智力价值在于开发实际的LPA应用，例如探索新物理的未来高能物理束。为此，将探讨解决上述两个问题的办法。首先，将研究使用定制的等离子体轮廓以减少束发散，从而能够改善与传统束传输系统的耦合。第二，探索自由电子激光器（FEL）。LPA提供高峰电流束，因此，将LPA束视为FEL的驱动器是很自然的。尽管FEL应用目前受到LPA电子束的能量扩展（百分之几）的阻碍，但是LPA束到FEL的应用可以通过在LPA之后的束相空间操纵使用实验证明的LPA束特性来实现。本计画考虑将飞秒LPA光束解压缩，降低光束切片能量扩散，使自由电子激光产生。

Plasma acceleration is a cutting-edge technique for accelerating charged particles such as electrons using the electric field associated with a plasma structure, such as an electron plasma wave. The plasma structure is created using either ultra-short laser pulses or particle beams. This technique offers a way to build high performance particle accelerators of much smaller size than conventional accelerator techniques. This award will further develop Laser-Plasma accelerators (LPA). Applications of LPA electron beams require capture, transport, and manipulation of the electron beam following exit of the plasma accelerator. This award will investigate two aspects of beam dynamics following the plasma accelerator that are critical to future applications: 1. Coupling of the LPA beam into conventional beam transport systems. 2. Beam decompression to enable light source applications.This work will benefit most applications of LPA beams, in particular for high energy physics and light source applications. The production of high-energy particle beams for particle physics applications requires the staging of multiple LPAs, and the proposed research will directly impact the design of the LPA beam coupling system between stages. An LPA driven Free Electron Laser (FEL) is considered one of the most promising near-term applications of LPA technology, and this research will lay the groundwork for the first proof-of-principle demonstration of an LPA-driven FEL generating coherent, high-peak brightness x-rays.The intellectual merit of this award lies in the development of practical LPA applications such as future high-energy physics beams for exploration of new physics. This will be done by exploring solutions to the two issues mentioned above. First, the use of tailored plasma profiles will be investigated to reduce the beam divergence, enabling improved coupling to a conventional beam transport system. Second, by exploring Free-Electron lasers (FEL). LPAs deliver high peak current beams, and, hence, it is natural to consider LPA beams as drivers for FELs. Although the FEL application is presently hindered by the energy spread (few percent) of the LPA electron beam, application of LPA beams to FELs may be accomplished using experimentally-demonstrated LPA beam properties by beam phase space manipulation following the LPA. This project considers decompression of the femtosecond LPA beam, reducing the beam slice energy spread, enabling FEL lasing.