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Carrier-envelope phase controlled dynamics of relativistic electron beams in a laser-wakefield accelerator

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Abstract

In laser-wakefield acceleration, an ultra-intense laser pulse is focused into an underdense plasma to accelerate electrons to relativistic velocities. In most cases, the pulses consist of multiple optical cycles and the interaction is well described in the framework of the ponderomotive force where only the envelope of the laser has to be considered. But when using single-cycle pulses, the ponderomotive approximation breaks down, and the actual waveform of the laser has to be taken into account. In this paper, we use near-single-cycle laser pulses to drive a laser-wakefield accelerator. We observe variations of the electron beam pointing on the order of 10 mrad in the polarization direction, as well as 30% variations of the beam charge, locked to the value of the controlled laser carrier-envelope phase, in both nitrogen and helium plasma. Those findings are explained through particle-in-cell simulations indicating that low-emittance, ultrashort electron bunches are periodically injected off-axis by the transversally oscillating bubble associated with the slipping carrier-envelope phase.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under Contract no. ANR-20-CE92-0043-01. Numerical simulations were performed using HPC resources from GENCI-TGCC (Grand Équipement National de Calcul Intensif) (Grant no. 2020-A0090510062) with the IRENE supercomputer. This project has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program IFAST under Grant Agreement no. 101004730.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LOA, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, ENSTA Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 181 Chemin de la Hunière, 91120, Palaiseau, France

    Lucas Rovige, Joséphine Monzac, Julius Huijts, Igor A. Andriyash, Aline Vernier, Jaismeen Kaur, Marie Ouillé, Zhao Cheng, Rodrigo Lopez-Martens & Jérôme Faure

  2. Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Savanoriu Ave. 231, 02300, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Vidmantas Tomkus, Valdas Girdauskas, Gediminas Raciukaitis, Juozas Dudutis, Valdemar Stankevic & Paulius Gecys

  3. Vytautas Magnus University, K.Donelaicio St. 58, 44248, Kaunas, Lithuania

    Valdas Girdauskas

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  1. Lucas Rovige
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Ultrafast Phenomena from attosecond to picosecond timescales: theory and experiments. Guest editors: Franck Lépine, Lionel Poisson.

Appendix 1: PIC simulation results for an initial CEP of \(\pi /2\)

Appendix 1: PIC simulation results for an initial CEP of \(\pi /2\)

Figure 11 shows a similar PIC simulation analysis as in Fig. 6 of the main text, but with an initial CEP shifted by \(\pi /2\). There are again clearly three main injection events, yielding three separate micro-bunches, but now electron are mainly injected from the top (blue) with a negative initial momentum and the total beam points downward at the end of the simulation.

Fig. 11
figure 11

Particle-in-cell simulation of a LPA driven by a 4.0 fs laser in a helium plasma, for an initial CEP of \(\pi /2\). a Snapshot of the wakefield, showing three different injected sub-bunches. Electron density in the (y, z)-plane is shown in gray, and injected electrons are displayed in orange (blue) when their pointing is positive (negative) at the end of the simulation. The normalized laser electric field \(E_l/E_0=E_l/(m_{\text {e}}c\omega _0/e)\) (red dashed line) and its envelope (blue solid line) are also shown. b Top: transverse momentum in the polarization direction as a function of propagation distance for two sub-bunches injected with a positive (bunch +) and negative (bunch −) initial transverse momentum, corresponding to opposite signs of CEP-dependent bubble asymmetry at the moment of injection. Bottom: longitudinal momentum of the two sub-bunches. Both momenta are normalized to \({m}_{\mathrm{ec}}\). c Asymmetry of the wakefield in the y-direction (red) and difference in the mean position of the bubble in z between the top part (y > 0) and the bottom part (y < 0) of the wake (black). Charge injection rate for the two electron populations shown in a with corresponding colors, as a function of the simulation time for an initial CEP of \(\pi /2\). The gray dashed lines highlight the three main injection events

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Rovige, L., Monzac, J., Huijts, J. et al. Carrier-envelope phase controlled dynamics of relativistic electron beams in a laser-wakefield accelerator. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 232, 2265–2276 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-022-00675-7

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