Experimental Demonstration of Laser Guiding and Wakefield Acceleration in a Curved Plasma Channel

Curved plasma channels have been proposed to guide intense lasers for various applications, such as x-ray laser emission, compact synchrotron radiation, and multistage laser wakefield acceleration [e.g. J. Luo et al. , Phys. Rev. Lett. 120 , 154801 (2018)]. Here, a carefully designed experiment shows evidences of intense laser guidance and wakefield acceleration in a centimeter-scale curved plasma channel. Both experiments and simulations indicate that when the channel curvature radius is gradually increased and the laser incidence offset is optimized, the transverse oscillation of the laser beam can be mitigated, and the stably guided laser pulse excites wakefields and accelerates electrons along the curved plasma channel to a maximum energy of 0.7 GeV. Our results also show that such a channel exhibits good potential for seamless multistage laser wakefield acceleration.

Automated summary

A carefully designed experiment demonstrates the ability of centimeter-scale curved plasma channel to guide intense lasers and accelerate wakefields. Both experiments and simulations show that by gradually increasing the channel curvature radius and optimizing the laser incidence offset, the transverse oscillation of the laser beam can be mitigated, and the guided laser pulse excites wakefields, accelerating electrons to a maximum energy of 0.7 GeV. The results also indicate that such a channel has great potential for seamless multistage laser wakefield acceleration.