Electrical & Computer Engineering
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Item Quasi-phasematched acceleration of electrons in a density modulated plasma waveguide(2014) Yoon, Sung Jun; Milchberg, Howard M; Electrical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Two quasi-phasematching schemes are proposed for efficient acceleration of electrons to relativistic energies using moderate intensity laser pulses. In the first scheme, Direct Laser Acceleration (DLA) in a corrugated plasma waveguide is proposed for acceleration of relativistic electrons with sub-terawatt laser systems, using the laser field directly as the accelerating field. The second scheme uses the fact that a plasma wakefield generated by an intense guided pulse in a corrugated plasma waveguide can accelerate relativistic electrons significantly beyond the well-known dephasing limit. In each case, particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are used to validate the acceleration concept, demonstrating linear acceleration by either the phase matched laser field or phase-matched wakefield. In the phase matched wakefield case, theory and PIC simulations demonstrate a significant increase in energy gain compared to the standard laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) scheme. Corrugated plasma waveguides can be generated by the interaction between an ionizing laser pulse and an atomic cluster flow interrupted by an array of thin wires,. When the collisional mean free path of the clusters is greater than the wire diameter, shadows of the periodically located wires are imparted on the cluster flow, leading to the production of axially modulated plasma waveguides after laser heating of the flow. This occurs when the population ratio of clusters to monomers in the gas is high. At other limit, dominated by gas monomer flow, shock waves generated off the wires by the supersonic gas flow disrupts modulated waveguide generation. Lastly, we experimentally demonstrate LWFA with ionization injection in a N5+ plasma waveguide. It is first shown that the plasma waveguide is almost completely composed of He-like nitrogen (N5+). It is then shown that intense pulse channeling in the plasma waveguide drives stronger wakefields, while the ionization injection process is critical to lowering the laser intensity threshold for self-trapping.Item EFFICIENT SIMULATION OF ELECTRON TRAPPING IN LASER AND PLASMA WAKEFIELD ACCELERATION(2009) Morshed, Sepehr; Antonsen, Thomas M; Electrical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Plasma based laser Wakefield accelerators (LWFA) have been a subject of interest in the plasma community for many years. In LWFA schemes the laser pulse must propagate several centimeters and maintain its coherence over this distance, which corresponds to many Rayleigh lengths. These Wakefields and their effect on the laser can be simulated in the quasistatic approximation. The 2D, cylindrically symmetric, quasistatic simulation code, WAKE is an efficient tool for the modeling of short-pulse laser propagation in under dense plasmas [P. Mora & T.M. Antonsen Phys. Plasmas 4, 1997]. The quasistatic approximation, which assumes that the driver and its wakefields are undisturbed during the transit time of plasma electrons, through the pulse, cannot, however, treat electron trapping and beam loading. Here we modify WAKE to include the effects of electron trapping and beam loading by introducing a population of beam electrons. Background plasma electrons that are beginning to start their oscillation around the radial axis and have energy above some threshold are removed from the background plasma and promoted to "beam" electrons. The population of beam electrons which are no longer subject to the quasistatic approximation, are treated without approximation and provide their own electromagnetic field that acts upon the background plasma. The algorithm is benchmarked to OSIRIS (a standard particle in cell code) simulations which makes no quasistatic approximation. We also have done simulation and comparison of results for centimeter scale GeV electron accelerator experiments from LBNL. These modifications to WAKE provide a tool for simulating GeV laser or plasma wakefield acceleration on desktop computers.