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Strong-field QED experiments using the BELLA PW laser dual beamlines

  • Regular Article – Atomic Physics
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Abstract

The petawatt (PW) laser facility of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center has recently commissioned its second laser pulse transport line. This new beamline can be operated in parallel with the first beamline and enables strong-field quantum electrodynamics (SF-QED) experiments at BELLA. In this paper, we present an overview of the upgraded BELLA PW facility with a SF-QED experimental layout in which intense laser pulses collide with GeV-class laser-wakefield-accelerated electron beams. We present simulation results showing that experiments will allow the study of laser-particle interactions from the classical to the SF-QED regime with a nonlinear quantum parameter of up to \(\chi \sim \)2. In addition, we show that experiments will enable the study and production of GeV-class, mrad-divergence positron beams via the Breit–Wheeler process.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has no associated data or the data will not be deposited. [Authors’ comment: No data other than what is required in the manuscript is required to reproduce the calculations. There is no experimental data.]

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy, under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, and used the computational facilities at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). We acknowledge helpful discussions with T. Blackburn regarding the ptarmigan code. The contributions from W. P. Leemans were made prior to his 2019 departure from LBNL to DESY.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, USA

    M. Turner, S. S. Bulanov, C. Benedetti, A. J. Gonsalves, K. Nakamura, J. van Tilborg, C. B. Schroeder, C. G. R. Geddes & E. Esarey

  2. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany

    W. P. Leemans

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  1. M. Turner
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  2. S. S. Bulanov
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  3. C. Benedetti
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  5. W. P. Leemans
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  7. J. van Tilborg
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  8. C. B. Schroeder
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  9. C. G. R. Geddes
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  10. E. Esarey
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Contributions

MT lead the experimental design effort and described worked on the installation and commissioning of BELLA PW second beamline together with AJG and KN. SSB performed the electron beam-laser pulse interaction simulations for this manuscript and provided the theoretical SF-QED paper discussion. CB simulated and optimized the laser wakefield accelerated electron beams. WPL was involved in the initial design and realization of the BELLA PW second beamline project. JvT, CBS, CGRG and EE provided input at all stages of the manuscript preparation and coordinated and supervised the efforts.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to M. Turner.

Appendix: Idealized LWFA stages in the Quasi-linear and bubble regime

Appendix: Idealized LWFA stages in the Quasi-linear and bubble regime

In the following, we describe the details of the idealized LWFA stages discussed in Sect. 5.

For the idealized stage in the quasi-linear regime (see black dotted lines in Fig. 4), we considered an LWFA driven by a super-matched (see Ref. [72] for details on the definition) laser pulse with \(a_0=1.6\), \(k_p w_0=4\), and \(k_p c T_{fwhm}=2.12\) (Gaussian longitudinal profile). Here, \(k_p=(4\pi n_0 e^2/mc^2)^{1/2}\) is the plasma wavenumber. The central laser wavelength is 800 nm. The operational density is specified once the laser energy is specified and is given by \(n_0(\hbox {cm}^{-3})\simeq 7.14\times 10^{17} (U_1 (J))^{-2/3}\). To guide the laser a plasma with a parabolic transverse density profile, \(R_m=w_0\) is used.

For the stage operating in the bubble regime (see green dashed lines in Fig. 4), laser driver is bi-Gaussian and its intensity is such that \(a_0=4.5\); furthermore, laser focal spot size \(w_{\textrm{0}}\) and pulse length \(\tau \) are chosen according to the theory in Ref. [73] (i.e., \(k_p w_0=2\sqrt{a_0}\), and \(cT_{fwhm}=(2/3)w_0\)), and the central laser wavelength is 800 nm. As before, the operational density of the stage is specified once the laser energy is specified and is given by \(n_0(\hbox {cm}^{-3})\simeq 7.02\times 10^{18} (U_1 (J))^{-2/3}\). Note that, for a given laser energy, and for the parameters considered here, the density of a stage operating in the quasi-linear regime is about an order of magnitude lower compared to the one of a stage operating in the bubble regime. Due to the longer dephasing and depletion lengths at lower densities, the energy gain provided by a quasi-linear stage is generally larger than that provided by a stage operating in the bubble regime.

In both the quasi-linear and bubble stages, the initial electron beam is chosen to experience \(\sim \)75% of the maximum accelerating field (for the stage in the bubble regime the maximum field is obtained with a linear extrapolation of the longitudinal wake to the back of the bubble), and the current profile is such that the longitudinal wakefield in the beam region is initially flat (i.e., strongly beam-loaded stages). The charge of the electron beam is \(Q_b(\hbox {pC})\simeq 37 (U_1 (J))^{1/3}\) in the quasi-linear stage and \(Q_b(\hbox {pC})\simeq 139 (U_1 (J))^{1/3}\) for the bubble case.

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Turner, M., Bulanov, S.S., Benedetti, C. et al. Strong-field QED experiments using the BELLA PW laser dual beamlines. Eur. Phys. J. D 76, 205 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-022-00535-y

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