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AbstractAbstract
[en] This thesis deals with the temporal characterisation of electron bunches produced by a laser plasma accelerator. In the so-called laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) scheme, an ultra-short high-intensity laser pulse excites a plasma wave, which can sustain accelerating electric fields of several hundred GV/m, thus exceeding the fields attainable by current state-of-the-art radio frequency (RF) accelerators by four orders of magnitude, offering the prospect of downsizing both the size and cost of such machines. Furthermore, by intrinsically confining the accelerated electron beam to the μm-scale size of the plasma wave, LWFAs provide ultra-short and highly brilliant beams, sparking great scientific interest for their application as a driver for compact sources of ultra-short X-ray pulses, e.g. Thomson-scattering, betatron sources or table-top free-electron lasers (FELs). The bunch profile is an important quantity for the application of these sources. With particular regard to the envisioned table-top FELs, it also determines the available peak current, an import input parameter for an appropriate undulator design that is optimized to support the self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) process. The experiments presented in this thesis comprise the measurement of the temporal profile of electron bunches produced by LWFA and further investigation of the evolution of the temporal profile in dependence of the acceleration distance and the plasma density. By measuring the intensity spectrum of coherent transition radiation (CTR) emitted by LWFA-driven electron bunches in the frequency domain, the experiments allow a reconstruction of the longitudinal bunch profiles with unprecedented resolution. Compared to earlier work, a key improvement is the single-shot coverage of a broadband spectral range of more than four octaves, which yields a time resolution of the reconstructed bunch profile in the sub-femtosecond region. This work further inspired the development of a new iterative reconstruction algorithm by our collaborators from Oxford University. A major benefit of their algorithm is to avoid any a priori assumptions about the bunch shape or extrapolation of the spectrum outside the measured range, which are usually necessary in traditional methods. In the presented experiments, the ATLAS 50 TW Ti:Sa based laser system was used in conjunction with a hydrogen-filled gas cell. Under optimized conditions, the shortest bunch duration was determined to 4.8±0.2 fs for single electron bunches with a maximum energy of 650 MeV, a charge of 30 pC and a resulting peak current of 5.7±1.2 kA. In combination with the lengthtunable gas target, the single-shot measurement technique allows for the first time to study the temporal evolution of the electron bunch profile as a function of the acceleration distance. This technique sheds new light onto the acceleration regimes characterized by electron dephasing and laser depletion as well as the involved plasma dynamics. The results show that after electron dephasing a second electron bunch can be injected in the first or subsequent plasma periods. After laser depletion, the first bunch is further found to be dense enough to drive its own beam-driven wakefield. The obtained double bunch structure is well suited for further beam-driven experiments and may enable a demonstration scheme for an energy boost by afterburner acceleration in the near future.
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19 May 2017; 185 p; Diss.
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Miscellaneous
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Thesis/Dissertation
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