Energy spread minimization in a cascaded laser wakefield accelerator via velocity bunching

Abstract

We propose a scheme to minimize the energy spread of an electron beam (e-beam) in a cascaded laser wakefield accelerator to the one-thousandth-level by inserting a stage to compress its longitudinal spatial distribution. In this scheme, three-segment plasma stages are designed for electron injection, e-beam length compression, and e-beam acceleration, respectively. The trapped e-beam in the injection stage is transferred to the zero-phase region at the center of one wakefield period in the compression stage where the length of the e-beam can be greatly shortened owing to the velocity bunching. After being seeded into the third stage for acceleration, the e-beam can be accelerated to a much higher energy before its energy chirp is compensated owing to the shortened e-beam length. A one-dimensional theory and two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations have demonstrated this scheme and an e-beam with 0.2% rms energy spread and low transverse emittance could be generated without loss of charge. © 2016 Author(s)