We present the experimental optimization of electrons in the several hundred keV energy range originated from laser-irradiated wire targets. Accelerated by a femtosecond laser pulse, an electron pulse emitted from the wire target was collimated immediately along the wire to a filter unit for the manipulation of energy and spatial distributions. It is shown in simulation that with a pair of magnets as the filter unit, the optimized electrons could serve as a compact and tunable electron source. The proposed system was demonstrated in a proof-of-principle experiment where we attained 1 fC bunch charge with transverse coherence length approaching 1 nm based on a 0.2 TW laser platform. This indicates the scheme as a promising candidate for single-shot electron diffraction.

In this paper, we report the recent progress on the $1~\text{PW}/0.1~\text{Hz}$ laser beamline of Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). The SULF-1 PW laser beamline is based on the double chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme, which can generate laser pulses of 50.8 J at 0.1 Hz after the final amplifier; the shot-to-shot energy fluctuation of the amplified pulse is as low as 1.2% (std). After compression, the pulse duration of 29.6 fs is achieved, which can support a maximal peak power of 1 PW. The contrast ratio at $-80~\text{ps}$ before main pulse is measured to be $2.5\times 10^{-11}$. The focused peak intensity is improved by optimizing the angular dispersion in the grating compressor. The maximal focused peak intensity can reach $2.7\times 10^{19}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ even with an $f/26.5$ off-axis parabolic mirror. The horizontal and vertical angular pointing fluctuations in 1 h are measured to be 1.89 and $2.45~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{rad}$, respectively. The moderate repetition rate and the good stability are desirable characteristics for laser–matter interactions. The SULF-1 PW laser beamline is now in the phase of commissioning, and preliminary experiments of particle acceleration and secondary radiation under 300–400 TW/0.1 Hz laser condition have been implemented. The progress on the experiments and the daily stable operation of the laser demonstrate the availability of the SULF-1 PW beamline.

Multidimensional instabilities always develop with time during the process of radiation pressure acceleration, and are detrimental to the generation of monoenergetic proton beams. In this paper, a sharp-front laser is proposed to irradiate a triple-layer target (the proton layer is set between two carbon ion layers) and studied in theory and simulations. It is found that the thin proton layer can be accelerated once to hundreds of MeV with monoenergetic spectra only during the hole-boring (HB) stage. The carbon ions move behind the proton layer in the light-sail (LS) stage, which can shield any further interaction between the rear part of the laser and the proton layer. In this way, proton beam instabilities can be reduced to a certain extent during the entire acceleration process. It is hoped such a mechanism can provide a feasible way to improve the beam quality for proton therapy and other applications.

Energy chirp compensation of the electron bunch (e-bunch) in a laser wakefield accelerator, which is caused by the phase space rotation in the gradient wakefield, has been applied in many schemes for low energy spread e-bunch generation. We report the experimental observation of energy chirp compensation of the e-bunch in a nonlinear laser wakefield accelerator with a negligible beam loading effect. By adjusting the acceleration length using a wedge-roof block, the chirp compensation of the accelerated e-bunch was observed via an electron spectrometer. Apart from this, some significant parameters for the compensation process, such as the longitudinal dispersion and wakefield slope at the bunch position, were also estimated. A detailed comparison between experiment and simulation shows good agreement of the wakefield and bunch parameters. These results give a clear demonstration of the longitudinal characteristics of the wakefield in a plasma and the bunch dynamics, which are important for better control of a compact laser wakefield accelerator.

A method for inertial confinement fusion driven by powerful long wavelength electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), such as ${\rm CO}_{2}$ laser pulses or high power microwave pulses, is proposed. Due to the high efficiency of generating such long wavelength electromagnetic pulses, this method is especially important for the future fusion electricity power Special fuel targets are designed to overcome the shortcomings of the long wavelength electromagnetic pulses.

Plasma wakefield excited by a short TeV-scale proton beam is investigated in the highly nonlinear regime. Analysis of the “bubble” field illustrates that transverse expelling force of the wakefield can be compensated by the attractive force, which originates from the co-propagating electrons within the proton bunch, leading to a collimation effect that stabilizes the beam propagation. The protons located in the beam tail can be well-confined and accelerated forward for a long distance. Two-dimensional simulations show that after a 1-TeV proton bunch propagating through plasma for a distance, several percentages of the protons achieve a remarkable energy gain. This scheme presents a potential that proton beams from conventional accelerators may gain considerable additional energy through plasmas wakefields.

We explore the feasibility of accelerating electron beams up to energies much beyond 1 TeV in a realistic scale and evolution of the beam qualities such as emittance and energy spread at the final beam energy on the order of 100 TeV, using the newly formulated coupled equations describing the beam dynamics and radiative damping of electrons. As an example, we present a design for a 100 TeV laser-plasma accelerator in the operating plasma density np = 1015 cm−3 and numerical solutions for evolution of the normalized emittance as well as their analytical solutions. We show that the betatron radiative damping causes very small normalized emittance that promises future applications for the high-energy frontier physics.

A laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) with a weak focusing force is considered to seek improved beam quality in LWFA. We employ super-Gaussian laser pulses to generate the wakefield and study the behavior of the electron beam dynamics and synchrotron radiation arising from the transverse betatron oscillations through analysis and computation. We note that the super-Gaussian wakefields radically reduce the betatron oscillations and make the electron orbits mainly ballistic over a single stage. This feature permits to obtain small emittance and thus high luminosity, while still benefitting from the low-density operation of LWFA (Nakajima et al. 2011 Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams14, 091301), such as the reduced radiation loss, less number of stages, less beam instabilities, and less required wall plug power than in higher density regimes.

We present the idea of intensified attosecond X-ray generation based on nonlinear Thomson backscattering of an intense laser pulse by electrons trapped in plasma-vacuum boundary. Two frequency up-conversions due to the relativistic Doppler effect and longitudinal γ-spike effect are analyzed, respectively, where γ is the relativistic factor of the plasma surface. Relativistic resonance heating conditions should be used as a criterion for the experimental design to obtain efficient high-order harmonics and energetic electrons' generation at relatively low laser intensities. Shaping the laser field by proposing a detuned second-harmonic can generate a single attosecond pulse without spectral filtering.

By using an effective dielectric constant to modify the nanoplasma model, the interactions of large Ar clusters with high-intensity femtosecond laser pulses have been studied. It is shown that the resonance absorption mechanism plays a predominant role in the production of highly energetic argon ions, and the calculated mean kinetic energy of Ar ions is in good agreement with our previous experimental results. The scaling of mean kinetic energy and charge states of Ar ions against cluster size and laser intensity has also been analyzed. The results indicate the existence of optimum cluster sizes and optimum laser intensities where the best coupling efficiency of the laser energy can be obtained.

Space-resolved spectra of line-shaped laser-produced magnesium plasmas in the normal direction of the target have been obtained using a pinhole crystal spectrograph. These spectra are treated by a spectrum analyzing code for obtaining the true spectra and fine structures of overlapped lines. The spatial distributions of electron temperature and density along the normal direction of the target surface have been obtained with different spectral diagnostic techniques. Especially, the electron density plateaus beyond the critical surface in line-shaped magnesium plasmas have been obtained with a fitting technique applied to the Stark-broadened Ly-α wings of hydrogenic ions. The difference of plasma parameters between those obtained by different diagnostic techniques is discussed. Other phenomena, such as plasma satellites, population inversion, etc., which are observed in magnesium plasmas, are also presented.

The effect of laser intensity distribution along the line focus on the uniformity of the line-shaped plasmas produced is investigated with time-integrated and time-resolved soft X-ray and optical diagnostics. Evident plasma condition nonuniformities along the line focus resulting from nonuniform laser intensity distributions have been observed with a conventional simple line-focusing technique. With a new line-focusing technique producing a uniform laser illumination, a uniform, line-shaped plasma can be obtained. It is also found that nonuniformities under uniform laser illumination occur mostly during laser heating. The line-shaped uniform laser plasma can be used as a large, uniform X-ray source besides its importance in X-ray laser demonstration and amplification. As an application of such line-shaped plasmas as X-ray sources, the no-overcoat 5F X-ray film is calibrated for the first time by a new method in the soft X-ray range from 10–80 A.