1,721,156 research outputs found

    Issues with phase space characterization of laser-plasma generated electron beams

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    Plasma acceleration is the new frontier in particle beam accelerators. Using the strong electric fields inside a plasma it is possible to achieve accelerating gradients orders of magnitude larger with respect to current technologies. Different schemes, using completely different approaches, have been proposed and several already tested, producing beams of energy up to several GeV. Regardless of the technique used for acceleration a precise determination of the output beam parameters is mandatory for the fine tuning of the process. The measurement of these parameters, in particular the beam distribution in transverse and longitudinal phase space, is not trivial, mainly due to the large energy spread and to the tight focusing of these beams or to the background noise produced in the plasma channel. We illustrate the main problems related to the diagnostic of this kind of beams and some of the proposed or already realized solutions. © 2014 Elsevier B.V

    Challenges in plasma and laser wakefield accelerated beams diagnostic

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    The new frontier in the particle beam accelerator is the so called plasma acceleration. Using the strong electric field inside a plasma it is possible to achieve accelerating gradients in the order of magnitude larger with respect to the actual technologies. Different schemes have been proposed and several already tested, producing beams of energy of several GeV. Mainly two approaches are followed: either the beam is directly produced by the interaction of a TW/PW class laser with a gas jet or a preexisting particle beam is accelerated in a plasma channel. In both cases a precise determination of the emerging beam parameters is mandatory for the fine tuning of the devices. The measurement of these parameters, in particular the emittance, is not trivial, mainly due to the large energy spread and to the tight focusing of these beams or to the background noise produced in the plasma channel. We show the problems related to the diagnostic of this kind of beams and the proposed or already realized solutions. © 2012 Elsevier B.V

    Compact and tunable focusing device for plasma wakefield acceleration

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    Plasma wakefield acceleration, either driven by ultra-short laser pulses or electron bunches, represents one of the most promising techniques able to overcome the limits of conventional RF technology and allows the development of compact accelerators. In the particle beam-driven scenario, ultra-short bunches with tiny spot sizes are required to enhance the accelerating gradient and preserve the emittance and energy spread of the accelerated bunch. To achieve such tight transverse beam sizes, a focusing system with short focal length is mandatory. Here we discuss the development of a compact and tunable system consisting of three small-bore permanent-magnet quadrupoles with 520 T/m field gradient. The device has been designed in view of the plasma acceleration experiments planned at the SPARC-LAB test-facility. Being the field gradient fixed, the focusing is adjusted by tuning the relative position of the three magnets with nanometer resolution. Details about its magnetic design, beam-dynamics simulations, and preliminary results are examined in the paper. © 2018 Author(s)

    The SPARC linear accelerator based terahertz source

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    Ultra-short electron beams, produced through the velocity bunching compression technique, are used to drive the SPARC linear accelerator based source, which relies on the emission of coherent transition radiation in the terahertz range. This paper reports on the main features of this radiation, as terahertz source, with spectral coverage up to 5 THz and pulse duration down to 200 fs, with an energy per pulse of the order of several micro-joule, and as electron beam longitudinal diagnostics. © 2013, American Institute of Physics. All rights reserved

    Dual color X-rays from Thomson or Compton sources

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    We analyze the possibility of producing two color X or γ radiation by Thomson/Compton back-scattering between a high intensity laser pulse and a two-energy level electron beam, constituted by a couple of beamlets separated in time and/or energy obtained by a photoinjector with comb laser techniques and linac velocity bunching. The parameters of the Thomson source at SPARC-LAB have been simulated, proposing a set of values for a realistic experiments. © 2015 SPIE

    The SPARC-LAB high peak power THz source: Different methods of generation and characterization

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    High peak power THz radiation with tunable spectral bandwidth is produced at SPARC-LAB as coherent radiation (CR) from relativistic, short (100 fs) electron bunches. The CR spectrum is characterized through frequency-resolved techniques. © 2013 IEEE

    Novel schemes for the optimization of the SPARC narrow band THz source

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    A pulsed, tunable, narrow band radiation source with frequency in the THz region can be obtained collecting the coherent transition radiation produced by a train of ultra-short electron bunches having picosecond scale inter-distance. In this paper, we review the techniques feasible at the SPARC-LAB test facility to produce and manipulate the requested train of electron bunches and we examine the dynamics of their acceleration and compression. In addition, we show how the performances of the train compression and the radiation intensity and bandwidth can be significantly improved through the insertion of a fourth order harmonic cavity, working in the X-band and acting as a longitudinal phase space linearizer. © 2015 AIP Publishing LLC

    Electron Linac design to drive bright Compton back-scattering gamma-ray sources

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    The technological development in the field of high brightness linear accelerators and high energy/high quality lasers enables today designing high brilliance Compton-X and Gamma-photon beams suitable for a wide range of applications in the innovative field of nuclear photonics. The challenging requirements of this kind of source comprise: tunable energy (1-20 MeV), very narrow bandwidth (0.3%), and high spectral density (104 photons/s/eV). We present here a study focused on the design and the optimization of an electron Linac aimed to meet the source specifications of the European Extreme Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics project, currently funded and seeking for an innovative machine design in order to outperform state-of-the-art facilities. We show that the phase space density of the electron beam, at the collision point against the laser pulse, is the main quality factor characterizing the Linac. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC

    Wave theories of non-laminar charged particle beams: From quantum to thermal regime

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    The standard classical description of non-laminar charged particle beams in paraxial approximation is extended to the context of two wave theories. The first theory that we discuss (Fedele R. and Shukla, P. K. 1992 Phys. Rev. A 45, 4045. Tanjia, F. et al. 2011 Proceedings of the 38th EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, Vol. 35G. Strasbourg, France: European Physical Society) is based on the Thermal Wave Model (TWM) (Fedele, R. and Miele, G. 1991 Nuovo Cim. D 13, 1527.) that interprets the paraxial thermal spreading of beam particles as the analog of quantum diffraction. The other theory is based on a recently developed model (Fedele, R. et al. 2012a Phys. Plasmas 19, 102106; Fedele, R. et al. 2012b AIP Conf. Proc. 1421, 212), hereafter called Quantum Wave Model (QWM), that takes into account the individual quantum nature of single beam particle (uncertainty principle and spin) and provides collective description of beam transport in the presence of quantum paraxial diffraction. Both in quantum and quantum-like regimes, the beam transport is governed by a 2D non-local Schrödinger equation, with self-interaction coming from the nonlinear charge-and current-densities. An envelope equation of the Ermakov-Pinney type, which includes collective effects, is derived for both TWM and QWM regimes. In TWM, such description recovers the well-known Sacherer's equation (Sacherer, F. J. 1971 IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. NS-18, 1105). Conversely, in the quantum regime and in Hartree's mean field approximation, one recovers the evolution equation for a single-particle spot size, i.e. for a single quantum ray spot in the transverse plane (Compton regime). We demonstrate that such quantum evolution equation contains the same information as the evolution equation for the beam spot size that describes the beam as a whole. This is done heuristically by defining the lowest QWM state accessible by a system of non-overlapping fermions. The latter are associated with temperature values that are sufficiently low to make the single-particle quantum effects visible on the beam scale, but sufficiently high to make the overlapping of the single-particle wave functions negligible. This lowest QWM state constitutes the border between the fundamental single-particle Compton regime and the collective quantum and thermal regimes at larger (nano-to micro-) scales. Comparing it with the beam parameters in the existing accelerators, we find that it is feasible to achieve nano-sized beams in advanced compact machines. Copyright © 2014 Cambridge University Press

    Dual color x rays from Thomson or Compton sources

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    We analyze the possibility of producing two-color x or γ radiation by Thomson/Compton backscattering between a high intensity laser pulse and a two-energy level electron beam, constituted by a couple of beamlets separated in time and/or energy obtained by a photoinjector with comb laser techniques and linac velocity bunching. The parameters of the Thomson source at SPARC-LAB have been simulated, proposing a set of realistic experiments. © Published by the American Physical Society
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