Staged Acceleration of Plasma Accelerators

The large accelerating fields of laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) can reduce the distance required to reach high energies by many orders of magnitude. Higher laser power and improved targetry has increase the energy record, up to a current maximum of 7.8GeV. Reaching much higher energies in a single stage requires further increases in the laser power and further reductions in the plasma density, resulting in weaker accelerating gradients.

To maintain a higher average acceleration gradient , the use of multiple stages has been proposed, and has been demonstrated at the 100 MeV level. However, coupling of the drive laser while maintaining electron beam quality remains a huge challenge, and one that must be overcome compactly if a high average accelerating gradient is to be achieved across multiple stages.

In this project we will investigate the use of compact accelerating structures (plasma mirrors) at high intensity to couple laser beams into multiple LWFA stages, with a view to enabling high quality electron beams to be generated at high energy.