The REsonant Multi-Pulse Ionization injection

Abstract

The production of high-quality electron bunches in Laser Wake Field Acceleration relies on the possibility to inject ultra-low emittance bunches in the plasma wave. In this paper we present a new bunch injection scheme in which electrons extracted by ionization are trapped by a large-amplitude plasma wave driven by a train of resonant ultrashort pulses. In the REsonant Multi-Pulse Ionization (REMPI) injection scheme, the main portion of a single ultrashort (e.g Ti:Sa) laser system pulse is temporally shaped as a sequence of resonant sub-pulses, while a minor portion acts as an ionizing pulse. Simulations show that high-quality electron bunches with normalized emittance as low as $0.08$ mm$\times$mrad and $0.65\%$ energy spread can be obtained with a single present-day 100TW-class Ti:Sa laser system.