부산대학교 도서관

Laser driven accelerators promise to provide an alternative to conventional accelerator technology. They rely on the excitation of large amplitude density waves in a plasma by the photon pressure of an intense laser. The density oscillations in which electrons and ions are separated, result in extremely large longitudinal electric fields that can be several orders of magnitude larger than those that are used in today’s radio-frequency accelerators. Whereas this principle had been demonstrated experimentally for nearly two decades, it was not until 2004 that the production of high quality electron beams around 100 MeV was demonstrated. Analysis, aided by particle-in-cell simulations, as well as experiments with various plasma lengths and densities, indicate that tailoring the length of the accelerator, together with loading of the accelerating structure with beam, are the keys to production of mono-energetic electron beams. Increasing the energy towards a GeV and beyond will require reducing the plasma density and design criteria are discussed for an optimized accelerator module. The current progress and future directions are summarized through comparison with conventional accelerators, highlighting the unique short and long term prospects for intense radiation sources and high energy accelerators based on laser-drivenplasma accelerators.