Plasma wakefield excitation by incoherent laser pulses: a path towards high-average power laser-plasma accelerators

Abstract

In a laser plasma accelerator (LPA), a short and intense laser pulse propagating in a plasma drives a wakefield (a plasma wave with a relativistic phase velocity) that can sustain extremely large electric fields, enabling compact accelerating structures. Potential LPA applications include compact radiation sources and high energy linear colliders. We propose and study plasma wave excitation by an incoherent combination of a large number of low energy laser pulses (i.e., without constraining the pulse phases). We show that, in spite of the incoherent nature of electromagnetic fields within the volume occupied by the pulses, the excited wakefield is regular and its amplitude is comparable or equal to that obtained using a single, coherent pulse with the same energy. These results provide a path to the next generation of LPA-based applications, where incoherently combined multiple pulses may enable high repetition rate, high average power LPAs.