Traveling-Wave Electron Acceleration (TWEAC) -- Electron acceleration

Informal abstract via e-mail to organizer:

For the ANAR workshop community, the contribution shows a novel way of eliminating/curbing the use of multiple-stages, when aiming for high electron energies (i.e. in a laser-driven setting instead of a PWFA variant). Also, the new mechanism leads to quasi-static acceleration conditions and does not suffer from laser self-phase modulation, parasitic self-injection or other plasma instabilities. All of this could be of interest when discussing a roadmap to laser-plasma linear colliders.

Corresponding paper abstract:

Compact electron accelerators are paramount to next generation synchrotron light sources and free-electron lasers, as well as for advanced accelerators at the TeV energy frontier. Recent progress in laser-plasma driven accelerators (LPA) has extended their electron energies to the multi-GeV range and improved beam stability for insertion devices.
However, the sub-luminal group-velocity of plasma waves limits the final electron energy which can be achieved in a single LPA accelerator stage, also known as the dephasing limit.
Here we present the first laser-plasma driven electron accelerator concept without electrons outrunning the wakefield. Our scheme is robust against parasitic self-injection and self-phase modulation as well as drive-laser depletion and defocusing along the accelerated electron beam. It works for a broad range of plasma densities in gas targets.
This opens the way for scaling up electron energies towards TeV scale electron beams without the need for multiple laser-accelerator stages.