@inproceedings{08b39f9d4635437ab9b75324c0c1c1eb,
title = "Laser wakefield acceleration experiments using HERCULES laser",
abstract = "Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) in a supersonic gas-jet using a self-guided laser pulse was studied by changing laser power and plasma electron density. The recently upgraded HERCULES laser facility equipped with wavefront correction enables a peak intensity of 6.1x1019 W/cm2 at laser power of 80 TW to be delivered to the gas-jet using F/10 focusing optics. We found that electron beam charge was increased significantly with an increase of laser power from 30 TW to 80 TW and showed density threshold behavior at a fixed laser power. We also studied the influence of laser focusing conditions by changing the f-number of the optics to F/15 and found an increase in density threshold for electron production compared to the F/10 configuration. The analysis of different phenomena such as betatron motion of electrons, side scattering of the laser pulse for different focusing conditions, the influence of plasma density down ramp on LWFA are shown.",
keywords = "Injection threshold, Laser wakefield acceleration, Wavefront correction",
author = "T. Matsuoka and C. McGuffey and Y. Horovitz and F. Dollar and Bulanov, \{S. S.\} and V. Chvykov and G. Kalintchenko and P. Rousseau and V. Yanovsky and A. Maksimchuk and K. Krushelnick",
year = "2009",
month = nov,
day = "25",
doi = "10.1063/1.3204524",
language = "English",
isbn = "9780735406902",
series = "AIP Conference Proceedings",
pages = "182--188",
booktitle = "Laser-Driven Relativistic Plasmas Applied to Science, Industry and Medicine - The 2nd International Symposium",
note = "2nd International Symposium on Laser-Driven Relativistic Plasmas Applied to Science, Industry and Medicine ; Conference date: 19-01-2009 Through 23-01-2009",
}