Efficient laser wakefield accelerator in pump depletion dominated bubble regime

Abstract

With the usage of the postcompression technique, few-cycle joule-class laser pulses are nowadays available extending the state of the art of 100 TW-class laser working at 10 Hz repetition. In this Letter, we explore the potential of wakefield acceleration when driven with such pulses. The numerical modeling predicts that 50% of the laser pulse energy can be transferred into electrons with energy above 15 MeV, and with charge exceeding several nanocoulombs for the electrons at hundreds of MeV energy. In such a regime, the laser pulse depletes its energy to plasma rapidly driving a strong cavitated wakefield. The self-steepening effect induces a continuous prolongation of a bubble resulting in a massive continuous self-injection that explains the extremely high charge of the beam rending this approach suitable for promoting Bremsstrahlung emitter and generator of tertiary particles, including neutrons released through photonuclear reactions.