Terahertz pulse generation by ultraintense two-color laser fields ionizing gases with near- to far-infrared carrier wavelength is studied from particle-in-cell simulations. For a long pump wavelength ...(10.6 μm) promoting a large ratio of electron density over critical, photoionization is shown to catastrophically enhance the plasma wakefield, causing a net downshift in the optical spectrum and exciting THz fields with tens of GV/m amplitude in the laser direction. This emission is accompanied by coherent transition radiation (CTR) of comparable amplitude due to wakefield-driven electron acceleration. We analytically evaluate the fraction of CTR energy up to 30% of the total radiated emission including the particle self-field and numerically calibrate the efficiency of the matched blowout regime for electron densities varied over three orders of magnitude.
Particle accelerators driven by the interaction of ultraintense and ultrashort laser pulses with a plasma can generate accelerating electric fields of several hundred gigavolts per metre and deliver ...high-quality electron beams with low energy spread, low emittance and up to 1 GeV peak energy. Moreover, it is expected they may soon be able to produce bursts of electrons shorter than those produced by conventional particle accelerators, down to femtosecond durations and less. Here we present wide-band spectral measurements of coherent transition radiation which we use for temporal characterization. Our analysis shows that the electron beam, produced using controlled optical injection, contains a temporal feature that can be identified as a 15 pC, 1.4-1.8 fs electron bunch (root mean square) leading to a peak current of 3-4 kA depending on the bunch shape. We anticipate that these results will have a strong impact on emerging applications such as short-pulse and short-wavelength radiation sources, and will benefit the realization of laboratory-scale free-electron lasers.
Terahertz to far-infrared emission by two-color, ultrashort optical pulses interacting with underdense helium gases at ultrahigh intensities (>10^{19} W/cm^{2}) is investigated by means of 3D ...particle-in-cell simulations. The terahertz field is shown to be produced by two mechanisms occurring sequentially, namely, photoionization-induced radiation (PIR) by the two-color pulse, and coherent transition radiation (CTR) by the wakefield-accelerated electrons escaping the plasma. We exhibit laser-plasma parameters for which CTR proves to be the dominant process, providing terahertz bursts with field strength as high as 100 GV/m and energy in excess of 10 mJ. Analytical models are developed for both the PIR and CTR processes, which correctly reproduce the simulation data.
Generation of electron-positron pairs via the multiphoton Breit-Wheeler process in an all-optical scheme will be made possible on forthcoming high-power laser facilities through the collision of ...wakefield-accelerated GeV electrons with a counter-propagating laser pulse of 1022–1023Wcm−2 peak intensity. By means of integrated 3D particle-in-cell simulations, we show that the production of high-density sources of ultrarelativistic electron-positron pairs is within the reach of soon-to-be-available laser systems. Under physical conditions accessible to the dual-beam CILEX-Apollon facility, we find that the generated positrons can carry a total charge of 0.05–1 nC, with a mean energy of 100–400 MeV and an angular divergence of 0.01–0.1 rad. The variations of the positron source’s properties with respect to the laser parameters are also examined.
Relativistic interactions between ultraintense (>10^{18} W cm^{-2}) laser pulses and magnetized underdense plasmas are known to produce few-cycle Cerenkov wake radiation in the terahertz (THz) ...domain. Using multidimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate the possibility of generating high-field (>100 GV m^{-1}) THz bursts from helium gas plasmas embedded in strong (>100 T) magnetic fields perpendicular to the laser path. We show that two criteria must be satisfied for efficient THz generation. First, the plasma density should be adjusted to the laser pulse duration for a strong resonant excitation of the electromagnetic plasma wake. Second, in order to mitigate the damping of the transverse wake component across the density gradients at the plasma exit, the ratio of the relativistic electron cyclotron and plasma frequencies must be chosen slightly above unity, but not too large, lest the wake be degraded. Such conditions lead the outgoing THz wave to surpass in amplitude the electrostatic wakefield induced in a similar, yet unmagnetized plasma.
Laser-plasma accelerators can produce high-quality electron beams, up to giga electronvolts in energy, from a centimetre scale device. The properties of the electron beams and the accelerator ...stability are largely determined by the injection stage of electrons into the accelerator. The simplest mechanism of injection is self-injection, in which the wakefield is strong enough to trap cold plasma electrons into the laser wake. The main drawback of this method is its lack of shot-to-shot stability. Here we present experimental and numerical results that demonstrate the existence of two different self-injection mechanisms. Transverse self-injection is shown to lead to low stability and poor-quality electron beams, because of a strong dependence on the intensity profile of the laser pulse. In contrast, longitudinal injection, which is unambiguously observed for the first time, is shown to lead to much more stable acceleration and higher-quality electron beams.
Laser-wakefield acceleration constitutes a promising technology for future electron accelerators. A crucial step in such an accelerator is the injection of electrons into the wakefield, which will ...largely determine the properties of the extracted beam. We present here a new paradigm of colliding-pulse injection, which allows us to generate high-quality electron bunches having both a very low emittance (0.17 mm·mrad) and a low energy spread (2%), while retaining a high charge (~100 pC) and a short duration (3 fs). In this paradigm, the pulse collision provokes a transient expansion of the accelerating bubble, which then leads to transverse electron injection. This mechanism contrasts with previously observed optical injection mechanisms, which were essentially longitudinal. We also specify the range of parameters in which this new type of injection occurs and show that it is within reach of existing high-intensity laser facilities.
A new Particle-in-Cell code developed for the modelling of laser–plasma interaction is presented. The code solves Maxwell equations using Fourier expansion along the poloidal direction with respect ...to the laser propagation axis. The goal of the code is to provide a three-dimensional description of the laser–plasma interaction in underdense plasmas with computational load similar to bidimensional calculations. Code results are successfully compared with three-dimensional calculations.
The reconstruction of the Chernobyl accident source term has been previously carried out using core inventories, but also back and forth confrontations between model simulations and activity ...concentration or deposited activity measurements. The approach presented in this paper is based on inverse modelling techniques. It relies both on the activity concentration measurements and on the adjoint of a chemistry-transport model. The location of the release is assumed to be known, and one is looking for a source term available for long-range transport that depends both on time and altitude. The method relies on the maximum entropy on the mean principle and exploits source positivity. The inversion results are mainly sensitive to two tuning parameters, a mass scale and the scale of the prior errors in the inversion. To overcome this hardship, we resort to the statistical L-curve method to estimate balanced values for these two parameters. Once this is done, many of the retrieved features of the source are robust within a reasonable range of parameter values. Our results favour the acknowledged three-step scenario, with a strong initial release (26 to 27 April), followed by a weak emission period of four days (28 April–1 May) and again a release, longer but less intense than the initial one (2 May–6 May). The retrieved quantities of iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 that have been released are in good agreement with the latest reported estimations. Yet, a stronger apportionment of the total released activity is ascribed to the first period and less to the third one. Finer chronological details are obtained, such as a sequence of eruptive episodes in the first two days, likely related to the modulation of the boundary layer diurnal cycle. In addition, the first two-day release surges are found to have effectively reached an altitude up to the top of the domain (5000 m).
Recent progress in laser-driven plasma acceleration now enables the acceleration of electrons to several gigaelectronvolts. Taking advantage of these novel accelerators, ultrashort, compact, and ...spatially coherent x-ray sources called betatron radiation have been developed and applied to high-resolution imaging. However, the scope of the betatron sources is limited by a low energy efficiency and a photon energy in the 10 s of kiloelectronvolt range, which for example prohibits the use of these sources for probing dense matter. Here, based on three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we propose an original hybrid scheme that combines a low-density laser-driven plasma accelerator with a high-density beam-driven plasma radiator, thereby considerably increasing the photon energy and the radiated energy of the betatron source. The energy efficiency is also greatly improved, with about 1% of the laser energy transferred to the radiation, and the γ-ray photon energy exceeds the megaelectronvolt range when using a 15 J laser pulse. This high-brilliance hybrid betatron source opens the way to a wide range of applications requiring MeV photons, such as the production of medical isotopes with photonuclear reactions, radiography of dense objects in the defense or industrial domains, and imaging in nuclear physics.
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