Tailoring the laser pulse shape to improve the quality of the self-injected electron beam in laser wakefield acceleration

In laser wakefield acceleration, tailoring the shape of the laser pulse is one way of influencing the laser-plasma interaction and, therefore, of improving the quality of the self-injected electron beam in the bubble regime. Using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, the evolution dynamics of the laser pulse and the quality of the self-injected beam, for a Gaussian pulse, a positive skew pulse (i.e., one with sharp rise and slow fall), and a negative skew pulse (i.e., one with a slow rise and sharp fall) are studied. It is observed that with a negative skew laser pulse there is a substantial improvement in the emittance (by around a factor of two), and a modest improvement in the energy-spread, compared to Gaussian as well as positive skew pulses. However, the injected charge is less in the negative skew pulse compared to the other two. It is also found that there is an optimal propagation distance that gives the best beam quality; beyond this distance, though the energy increases, the beam quality deteriorates, but this deterioration is least for the negative skew pulse. Thus, the negative skew pulse gives an improvement in terms of beam quality (emittance and energy spread) over what one can get with a Gaussian or positive skew pulse. In part, this is because of the lesser injected charge, and the strong suppression of continuous injection for the negative skew pulse. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4775726]