Blackbody emission from laser breakdown in high-pressure gases.

Laser induced breakdown of pressurized gases is used to generate plasmas under conditions where the atomic density and temperature are similar to those found in sonoluminescing bubbles. Calibrated streak spectroscopy reveals that a blackbody persists well after the exciting femtosecond laser pulse has turned off. Deviation from Saha's equation of state and an accompanying large reduction in ionization potential are observed at unexpectedly low atomic densities-in parallel with sonoluminescence. In laser breakdown, energy input proceeds via excitation of electrons whereas in sonoluminescence it is initiated via the atoms. The similar responses indicate that these systems are revealing the thermodynamics and transport of a strongly coupled plasma.

Low-emittance electron bunches from a laser-plasma accelerator measured using single-shot x-ray spectroscopy.

X-ray spectroscopy is used to obtain single-shot information on electron beam emittance in a low-energy-spread 0.5 GeV-class laser-plasma accelerator. Measurements of betatron radiation from 2 to 20 keV used a CCD and single-photon counting techniques. By matching x-ray spectra to betatron radiation models, the electron bunch radius inside the plasma is estimated to be ~0.1 µm. Combining this with simultaneous electron spectra, normalized transverse emittance is estimated to be as low as 0.1 mm mrad, consistent with three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Correlations of the bunch radius with electron beam parameters are presented.

Spectroscopy of betatron radiation emitted from laser-produced wakefield accelerated electrons.

X-ray betatron radiation is produced by oscillations of electrons in the intense focusing field of a laser-plasma accelerator. These hard x-rays show promise for use in femtosecond-scale time-resolved radiography of ultrafast processes. However, the spectral characteristics of betatron radiation have only been inferred from filter pack measurements. In order to achieve higher resolution spectral information about the betatron emission, we used an x-ray charge-coupled device to record the spectrum of betatron radiation, with a full width at half maximum resolution of 225 eV. In addition, we have recorded simultaneous electron and x-ray spectra along with x-ray images that allow for a determination of the betatron emission source size, as well as differences in the x-ray spectra as a function of the energy spectrum of accelerated electrons.

Wavefront-sensor-based electron density measurements for laser-plasma accelerators.

Characterization of the electron density in laser produced plasmas is presented using direct wavefront analysis of a probe laser beam. The performance of a laser-driven plasma-wakefield accelerator depends on the plasma wavelength and hence on the electron density. Density measurements using a conventional folded-wave interferometer and using a commercial wavefront sensor are compared for different regimes of the laser-plasma accelerator. It is shown that direct wavefront measurements agree with interferometric measurements and, because of the robustness of the compact commercial device, offer greater phase sensitivity and straightforward analysis, improving shot-to-shot plasma density diagnostics.

Single-shot measurement of the spectral envelope of broad-bandwidth terahertz pulses from femtosecond electron bunches.

We present a new approach (demonstrated experimentally and through modeling) to characterize the spectral envelope of a terahertz (THz) pulse in a single shot. The coherent THz pulse is produced by a femtosecond electron bunch and contains information on the bunch duration. The technique, involving a single low-power laser probe pulse, is an extension of the conventional spectral encoding method (limited in time resolution to hundreds of femtoseconds) into a regime only limited in resolution by the laser pulse length (tens of femtoseconds). While only the bunch duration is retrieved (and not the exact charge profile), such a measurement provides a useful and critical parameter for optimization of the electron accelerator.

Plasma-density-gradient injection of low absolute-momentum-spread 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 wakefield accelerator injector to produce stable beams with 0.2 MeV/c-class momentum spread at high energies.