Speaker: Matthew Streeter (Queen’s University Belfast)
Title: Optimising the Efficiency of Laser Wakefield Accelerators and their Photon Sources
Abstract: Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) can accelerate electron beams to GeV energies over cm-scale interactions, due to their extremely high accelerating fields. Their utility as drivers for compact light sources has been demonstrated in a variety of proof-of-principle experiments, prompting investment in large-scale projects relying on LWFA. With this increase in scale, the efficiency of acceleration and photon generation processes becomes increasingly important. Maximising these efficiencies not only improves the applications, i.e. by increasing the photon yield, but also impacts the overall cost of running a large-scale facility. In this talk, I will present recent work to maximise the efficiency of laser wakefield acceleration through shaping of the plasma, and of photon generation via inverse Compton scattering through control of the scattering laser pulse.