Plasma gradient controlled injection and postacceleration of high quality electron bunches

Plasma density gradients in a gas jet were used to control the wake phase velocity and trapping threshold in a laser wakefield accelerator, producing stable electron bunches with longitudinal and transverse momentum spreads more than 10 times lower than in previous experiments (0.17 and 0.02 MeV=c FWHM, respectively) and with central momenta of 0.76 +- 0.02 MeV=c. Transition radiation measurements combined with simulations indicated that the bunches can be used as a wakefieldaccelerator injector to produce stable beams with 0.2 MeV=c-class momentum spread at high energies.