Colliding pulse injection experiments in non-collinear geometry for controlled laser plasma wakefield acceleration of electrons

An optical injection scheme for a laser-plasma based accelerator which employs a non-collinear counter-propagating laser beam to push background electrons in the focusing and acceleration phase via ponderomotive beat with the trailing part of the wakefield driver pulse is discussed. Preliminary experiments were performed using a drive beam of a0 = 2.6 and colliding beam of a1 = 0.8 both focused on the middle of a 200 mu m slit jet backed with 20 bar, which provided ∼ 260 mu m long gas plume. The enhancement in the total charge by the colliding pulse was observed with sharp dependence on the delay time of the colliding beam. Enhancement of the neutron yield was also measured, which suggests a generation of electrons above 10 MeV