Electron energy increase in a laser wakefield accelerator using up-ramp plasma density profiles

Abstract

The phase velocity of the wakefield of a laser wakefield accelerator can, theoretically, be manipulated by shaping the longitudinal plasma density profile, thus controlling the parameters of the generated electron beam. We present an experimental method where using a series of shaped longitudinal plasma density profiles we increased the mean electron peak energy more than 50%, from 175 +/- 1 MeV to 262 +/- 10 MeV and the maximum peak energy from 182 MeV to 363 MeV. The divergence follows closely the change of mean energy and decreases from 58.9 +/- 0.45 mrad to 12.6 +/- 1.2 mrad along the horizontal axis and from 35 +/- 0.3 mrad to 8.3 +/- 0.69 mrad along the vertical axis. Particle-in-cell simulations show that a ramp in a plasma density profile can affect the evolution of the wakefield, thus qualitatively confirming the experimental results. The presented method can increase the electron energy for a fixed laser power and at the same time offer an energy tunable source of electrons.