Absolute energy calibration for relativistic electron beams with pointing instability from a laser-plasma accelerator

The pointing instability of energetic electron beams generated from a laser-driven accelerator can cause a serious error in measuring the electron spectrum with a magnetic spectrometer. In order to determine a correct electron spectrum, the pointing angle of an electron beam incident on the spectrometer should be exactly defined. Here, we present a method for absolutely calibrating the electron spectrum by monitoring the pointing angle using a scintillating screen installed in front of a permanent dipole magnet. The ambiguous electron energy due to the pointing instability is corrected by the numerical and analytical calculations based on the relativistic equation of electron motion. It is also possible to estimate the energy spread of the electron beam and determine the energy resolution of the spectrometer using the beam divergence angle that is simultaneously measured on the screen. The calibration method with direct measurement of the spatial profile of an incident electron beam has a simple experimental layout and presents the full range of spatial and spectral information of the electron beams with energies of multi-hundred MeV level, despite the limited energy resolution of the simple electron spectrometer. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4725530]