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（如电子等离子体波）相关的电场来加速电子等带电粒子的尖端技术。等离子体结构是用超短激光脉冲或粒子束产生的。这项技术提供了一种构建比传统加速器技术小得多的高性能粒子加速器的方法。该合同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出口后对电子束进行捕获、传输和操作。该奖项将研究等离子体加速器后光束动力学的两个方面，这两个方面对未来的应用至关重要：LPA光束与常规光束输运系统的耦合。2. 光束减压，使光源应用。这项工作将有利于LPA光束的大多数应用，特别是高能物理和光源应用。用于粒子物理应用的高能粒子束的生产需要多级LPA，而本文的研究将直接影响级间LPA光束耦合系统的设计。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，该研究将为LPA驱动的自由电子激光器产生相干、峰值亮度x射线的首次原理验证示范奠定基础。该奖项的智力价值在于实际LPA应用的发展，例如用于探索新物理的未来高能物理光束。这将通过探索上述两个问题的解决方案来实现。首先，将研究定制等离子体轮廓的使用，以减少光束发散，从而改善与传统光束传输系统的耦合。第二，通过探索自由电子激光器（FEL）。LPA提供高峰值电流光束，因此，将LPA光束视为FELs的驱动器是很自然的。尽管目前LPA电子束的能量扩散（几个百分点）阻碍了自由电子激光器的应用，但LPA电子束在自由电子激光器中的应用可以通过实验证明LPA电子束的特性，通过LPA后的束相空间操作来实现。本项目考虑对飞秒LPA光束进行解压缩，减少光束切片能量扩散，实现FEL激光。

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.