2020/12/10 by M. Turner, Turner, M., A. J. Gonsalves +22
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Accelerator Physics (physics.acc-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph) #Pulsed Power Technology Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.05713
openalex publication_date 2020/12/10 · openalex created_date 2021/01/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We measured the parameter reproducibility and radial electron density profile of capillary discharge waveguides with diameters of 650 um to 2 mm and lengths of 9 to 40 cm. To our knowledge, 40 cm is the longest discharge capillary plasma waveguide to date. This length is important for >= 10 GeV electron energy gain in a single laser driven plasma wakefield acceleration (LPA) stage. Evaluation of waveguide parameter variations showed that their focusing strength was stable and reproducible to <0.2% and their average on-axis plasma electron density to <1%. These variations explain only a small fraction of LPA electron bunch variations observed in experiments to date. Measurements of laser pulse centroid oscillations revealed that the radial channel profile rises faster than parabolic and are in excellent agreement with magneto-hydro-dynamic simulation results. We show that the effects of non-parabolic contributions on Gaussian pulse propagation were negligible when the pulse was approximately matched to the channel. However, they affected pulse propagation for a non-matched configuration in which the waveguide was used as a plasma telescope to change the focused laser pulse spot size.