激光等离子体加速器研究综述

 综述了有关激光尾场加速器、等离子体拍频波加速器、多束激光脉冲驱动的尾场加速器以及自调制激光尾场加速器的概念及其基本特性,概述了近期的实验结果。介绍了等离子体波的产生机理及等离子体波中电子的俘获和加速,并讨论了存在于激光等离子体加速器中的一些限制和今后发展前景。     

激光等离子体波电子加速器

本文分别用理论分析和粒子模拟方法讨论了等离子体尾波加速器和拍波加速器的物理机制。结果表明,只要激光等离子体波足够强,加上适当强度的横向磁场,就可以把MeV数量级的电子在公尺距离内加速到GeV数量级的能量。另外,还用粒子模拟方法,研究了激光对热等离子体受激向后喇曼散射产生低相速度的等离子体静电波对低能电子加速的问题,探讨了多级或多波加速的可能性。结果表明,利用激光等离子体波加速器,在一般的实验室条件下,就可获得GeV数量级的高能电子。 关键词：     

等离子体尾场加速器中静电波特性

本文在线性近似下求得了等离子体尾场加速器中静电波的频率特征与增长率,对尾场形成机制作了物理解释。     

双频强激光与等离子体相互作用中的双稳态效应

本文详细研究了双频激光驱动的朗缪尔(Langmuir)波所呈现的双稳态效应。完全相对论性地导出了郎缪尔波振幅和位相的演变方程,分别研究了朗缪尔波饱和振幅和稳态振幅对等离子体频率和泵浦光强的双稳态响应,并讨论了滞后效应在激光等离子体拍频加速器中的应用。此外,还研究了在双稳态临界点附近朗缪尔波振幅随时间的变化特性。 关键词：     

超短脉冲强激光与等离子体的非线性相互作用

超短脉冲强光与等离子体相互作用是近年来令人注目的一个前沿领域。介绍了其中的超短脉冲强激光与非稠密等离子体作用中的激光尾波场与尾波场加速器、光脉冲频率上转换与脉宽正缩、相对论光导等重要研究课题。还介绍了超短脉冲强激光与固体靶作用听吸收机制，短标尺长等离子体产生、能量输运等有关问题的研究。     

第一讲台面型电子加速器——激光尾波场加速器

近年来，随着超短超强激光脉冲技术的发展，利用超短超强激光在等离子体中激发出的高强度尾波场来实现电子加速的方案也取得了巨大进展．相对于传统的射频腔加速器，这种新型的加速器由于以等离子体为介质，可以突破传统加速器中加速梯度小于100MV／m的限制，其加速梯度可以达到100GV／m．电子在这样的加速场下，在厘米量级的距离内就可以获得GeV的能量．随着台面型超短超强激光器的发展，新一代实用化的台面型电子加速器有望在不远的将来得以实现．文章将从理论和实验上对激光尾波场加速中的尾波激发、电子注入、距离延长三个方面加以介绍，同时给出国内在这些方面的一些研究进展．     

核物理与等离子体物理学科研究进展

1 理论物理 1．1 等离子体物理 深入开展了激光等离子体相互作用理论研究。为了模拟和研究激光与大尺度黑腔等离子体相互作用问题，分析了激光入射场、散射波场和离子声波的传播的耦合关系，考虑动力学效应，提出了描述自聚焦、受激散射非线性演化的耦合模型，完成流体程序的物理方案；研究了SRS时空演化机制，发现一些新物理现象；对超强激光与超高密度等离子体作用问题进行模拟，研究了高能电子、单能离子产生的新特征。     

等离子体拍频波加速器中三波相互作用的时间发展

计算了等离子体拍频波加速器中双频抽运光与Langmuir波的相互作用及其时间发展。指出Langmuir波出生成到饱和的过程,与三波位相由匹配到失配密切相关。三波位相差作为描写三波耦合程度的量对于双频激光激发Langmuir波至关重要。 关键词：     

基于共线型双等离子体的双色场辐射太赫兹波频谱调制

提出了一种通过共线型双等离子体的简单方法实现双色场作用下辐射太赫兹波的频谱调制。利用修正的光电流模型,模拟了共线型双等离子体在双色场条件下辐射太赫兹波的频谱分布。通过调节体系的参数,研究了两等离子体间距及激光光强对太赫兹波频谱调制的影响。结果表明,太赫兹频谱分布与两等离子体间距及双色激光强度有关。等离子体间距影响太赫兹波频谱的峰值个数和频移;激光光强虽会影响单个等离子体辐射太赫兹波的峰值频率,但是对于调制的频谱而言只会改变峰值的幅值。     

激光等离子体在螺线管发散磁场中的特性研究

激光烧蚀等离子体(LAP)可用作粒子加速器和离子注入器中使用的离子源。相较于其它离子源,激光离子源在流强上具有优势,但由于产生的离子束脉冲时间短,限制了其在加速器中的广泛应用。实验中通过对激光等离子体扩散区域引入螺线管磁场进行约束,实现了对激光等离子体脉冲时间结构的调制。为了研究螺线管磁场对LAP的影响,实验使用了不同的激光能量(1~8 J)来生产具有不同初始条件的激光等离子体,并应用了不同的磁场强度来约束激光等离子体。在螺线管边缘场,通过可移动的法拉第筒(FC)对激光等离子体的横向分布进行测量。对于不同初始状态的等离子体,随着磁场的增加,其离子脉冲的主要参数(脉冲总电荷量、峰值流强、脉宽)均呈现先上升后逐渐饱和的变化趋势。另外,在没有磁场的条件下,在所测量位置处,等离子体的横向呈均匀分布;而在磁场约束的条件下,等离子体明显向轴线聚集。以上实验结果对进一步了解磁约束激光等离子体的特性具有重要意义。     

Overview of plasma-based accelerator concepts

An overview is given of the physics issues relevant to the plasma wakefield accelerator, the plasma beat-wave accelerator, the laser wakefield accelerator, including the self-modulated regime, and wakefield accelerators driven by multiple electron or laser pulses. Basic properties of linear and nonlinear plasma waves are discussed, as well as the trapping and acceleration of electrons in the plasma wave. Formulas are presented for the accelerating field and the energy gain in the various accelerator configurations. The propagation of the drive electron or laser beams is discussed, including limitations imposed by key instabilities and methods for optically guiding laser pulses. Recent experimental results are summarized     

Plasma guiding and wakefield generation for second-generationexperiments

A design study has been carried out for a second-generation experiment on laser guiding and wakefield excitation in a channel. From simple scaling laws for the wakefield amplitude, dephasing length, the relativistic group velocity factor γ_g, and energy gain with and without guiding, we find that the parameter regime for a compact single stage GeV accelerator favors laser systems producing short pulses (10 fs⩽τ⩽100 fs), each containing an energy on the order of 100 mJ to a few J's. Taking the dephasing length as the maximum acceleration distance, plasma channels with lengths of 1-10 cm and densities of 10¹⁷-10¹⁹ cm^-3 need to be produced; whereas the design study has been primarily concerned with diffraction and channel guiding, dephasing and depletion limits, and linear wakefield theory, aspects of the effect of the plasma wave on the evolution of the laser pulse are discussed. We find that transverse and longitudinal pulse distortions could indeed affect the generated plasma wave phase velocity and amplitude, and hence may limit the achievable energy gains over the one-dimensional (1-D) linear estimates. Some issues for experiments on prototype small accelerators (100 MeV-1 GeV, cm scale) are also discussed     

激光等离子体尾波加速器的发展和展望

超强激光在气体等离子体中传输时可以激发出大振幅的电子等离子体尾波。激光等离子体尾波加速器是利用该尾波对带电粒子（特别是电子和正电子）进行加速的一种新型装置。由于其加速梯度相较于现有的常规加速器可以提升1000倍，为建造超紧凑型的加速器和辐射源奠定了基础，也为将来建造基于等离子体的超高能正负电子对撞机和自由电子激光装置提供了可能。对该新型加速器的原理、特点、发展历程，尤其是近十年来的主要进展和未来发展趋势及面临的主要挑战进行简要梳理和介绍。     

Laser electron acceleration beyond 100 GeV

Nowadays there is great progress on laser-driven plasma-based accelerators by exploiting petawatt-class lasers, where for one aspect electron beams can be accelerated to multi-GeV energy in a centimeter-scale plasma due to laser wakefield acceleration mechanism. While to date, worldwide researches on laser-plasma accelerators are focused to create compact particle and radiation sources for applications in a wide range of sciences, including basic, medical and industrial sciences, there are great interests in applications for high energy physics and astrophysics that explore unprecedented high-energy frontier phenomena, for which laser plasma accelerator concepts provide us with promising tools. Here, our endeavors toward “extreme light” in the IZEST are envisaged for the next 30 years perspective and issues on laser plasma electron acceleration beyond 100 GeV and furthermore toward the TeV regime, aiming at high energy physics applications.     

Ion Plasma Wave Wakefield Accelerators

The possibility of using space-charge waves on an ion beam or column as a wakefield accelerator is discussed. The primary advantages of using ion plasma waves over electron plasma waves are that the kinetic energy and fall-time requirements on the driving beam are reduced. One disadvantage in using a lower plasma frequency is that a larger current is required to achieve the same accelerating gradient. The basic aspects of wakefield accelerators are reviewed and this concept is analyzed in this context. Particle-in-cell simulations show that wakefields utilizing ion waves, although more complicated than plasma wakefields, can produce acceleration.     

Laser-driven electron beam and radiation sources for basic,medical and industrial sciences

To date active research on laser-driven plasma-based accelerators have achieved great progress on production of high-energy, high-quality electron and photon beams in a compact scale. Such laser plasma accelerators have been envisaged bringing a wide range of applications in basic, medical and industrial sciences. Here inheriting the groundbreaker’s review article on “Laser Acceleration and its future” [Toshiki Tajima, (2010)],¹⁾ we would like to review recent progress of producing such electron beams due to relativistic laser-plasma interactions followed by laser wakefield acceleration and lead to the scaling formulas that are useful to design laser plasma accelerators with controllability of beam energy and charge. Lastly specific examples of such laser-driven electron/photon beam sources are illustrated.     

Low emittance, high brilliance relativistic electron beams from a laser-plasma accelerator

Progress in laser wakefield accelerators indicates their suitability as a driver of compact free-electron lasers (FELs). High brightness is defined by the normalized transverse emittance, which should be less than 1π mm mrad for an x-ray FEL. We report high-resolution measurements of the emittance of 125 MeV, monoenergetic beams from a wakefield accelerator. An emittance as low as 1.1±0.1π mm mrad is measured using a pepper-pot mask. This sets an upper limit on the emittance, which is comparable with conventional linear accelerators. A peak transverse brightness of 5×101? A m?1 rad?1 makes it suitable for compact XUV FELs.     

Laser acceleration and its future

Laser acceleration is based on the concept to marshal collective fields that may be induced by laser. In order to exceed the material breakdown field by a large factor, we employ the broken-down matter of plasma. While the generated wakefields resemble with the fields in conventional accelerators in their structure (at least qualitatively), it is their extreme accelerating fields that distinguish the laser wakefield from others, amounting to tiny emittance and compact accelerator. The current research largely falls on how to master the control of acceleration process in spatial and temporal scales several orders of magnitude smaller than the conventional method. The efforts over the last several years have come to a fruition of generating good beam properties with GeV energies on a table top, leading to many applications, such as ultrafast radiolysis, intraoperative radiation therapy, injection to X-ray free electron laser, and a candidate for future high energy accelerators.     

强激光与等离子体相互作用产生的超强太赫兹辐射

超短强激光脉冲在等离子体中传播时会激发大振幅的等离子体尾波场，它是一种电子等离子体波．由于这是一种静电波，它一般不能转换成电磁辐射．我们发现在不均匀等离子体中激发的尾波场在一定条件下可以通过线性模式转换产生电磁辐射．由于用超短强激光脉冲尾波场可以达到的电场振幅达100GV／m，其振动频率在太赫兹（10^12Hz）附近，用这种方法可以产生电场强度达到GV／m的太赫兹辐射．