1981 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.

However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Vol. NS-28, No. 3, June 1981 LASER BEAT ACCELERATOR T. Tajima Institute for Fusion Studies University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712 and J.M. Dawson Department of Physics University of California at Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 90024 Abstract wave is very close to c: op/kp' (WO-W1)/(ko-kl)&. Parallel intense photon (laser, microwave, etc.) As the electrostatic plasma wave grows and traps the beams WO,ko and u1,kl shone on a plasma with frequency bulk of electrons, the wave staturates via the separation equal to the plasma frequency o is capable 3 The accelerated enhanced Landau damping. electron P of accelerating plasma electrons to high energies in energy by this mechanism is theoretically large flux. The photon beat excites through the for-1 ward Raman scattering large ampLitude plasmons whose \P"" = 2mc2[l-(~O-~,)2/c2(k0-kl)2] -2mc2 (MO/tip)' , (1) phase velocity is equal to (Wo-til)/(ko-kl), close to c which may be derived along the line given in Ref. 1. in an underdense plasma. The plasmon electrostatic Computer Simulation fields trap electrons and carry them to high energies: We demonstrate the above concept by carrying out Maximum electron energy a particle simulation utilizing the relativistic -1 electromagnetic particle code.4 The code deals with a "2mc2(wo/tio)2 . flax = 2mc2[l-(wo-w~)'!c2(ko-k~)z] one and two halves dimensions [one position variable The multiple forward Raman instability produces smaller (v,,v ,v ) and field variables]. (x) and three velocity Y = and smaller frequency and group velocity of photons; The pump electromagnetic waves (uO,ko) and (til,kl) are thus the photons slow down in the plasma by emitting accelerated electrons (inverse Cherenkov process). In the partipropagating in the positive x direction. cular case we show parameters are: wo=4.29 0 ) Introduction P A plain straight waveguide sustains electromagw1=3.29 w , the electron thermal velocity Yte=l wpA, P netic waves whose phase velocity is greater than speed the speed of light c=lO tipA, the system length 1024A, of light c. Such electromagnetic waves, therefore, cannot couple to particles. If one imposes periodic and 10240 particles, and each beam amplitude is given structure along the propagation direction in the waveas eEi/noi=c (i=O or i=l) withAbeing the grid spacing. guide, the Brillouin effect on the waveguide modes Figure l(a) shows the phase space of electrons accelermakes the phase velocity of the electromagnetic waves ated by the beat plasma wave. Instead of having a less than c, thereby enables to couple with particles. stretched phase space tongue (high energy electrons) Conventional linear accelerators employ such a method. just behind the short pulse laser packet (Ref. l), we For collective acceleration, a large flux of electrons now have a high energy tongue in every ridge of each participate and now these electrons may be regarded as The observed wavelength of the beat plasma wave. plasma electrons with or without background ions. The maximum electron energy was 85 mc2, which was slightly electromagnetic waves (photons) in such a medium has a One reason more than the theoretical value by Eq. (1). phase velocity c/(l-tii/~i)~, again larger than c, and why it exceeds the theoretical value may be that we have now two eEi/mwi=c waves (i=O and i=l) so that thus are unable to couple to and accelerate electrons, 5 where wo is the photon frequency The and o the electron magnetic acceleration also begins to play a role. P distribution function f(p,,) is shown in Fig. l(b), plasma frequency. It is, however, possible to nonlinearly couple to the plasma if the amplitudes of the exhibiting intense plasma heating as well as an In Kefs. electromagnetic waves are sufficiently large. extremely energetic tail. 1 and 2 we discussed a laser electron accelerator Forward Raman Instability ______ scheme by exciting a large amplitude Langmuir wave Figure 2 shows the electromagnetic energy spectra created as a wake by a strong photon wavepacket with a At the earlier of the system at two different times. very short spatial pulse length. We found there that time the originally two-peaked (at k. and kl) structure the forward Raman process plays a stronger role than the backscattering. In this article we take full shows already a downward cascade, while some small advantage of the forward Raman process by injecting two The spectrum is amount of energy is up-converted. parallel photon beams creating a large amplitude beat sharply peaked at particular discrete wavenumbers plasma wave. This is to utilize free electrons (plasma The where n is an integer and kp=Wp/c. kn=ko-nk P electrons) nonlinearly trapped by the created electrospectral density S(k,w) (not displayed here) for the static wave and, in this sense, it is an inverse electrostatic component shows no significant energy in Process to the free electron laser. any frequency at the backscatter wavenumber kbg2 kg. Photon Beat Accelerator -This strongly suggests that all possible backscatterIn order to avoid the difficulty to make a very ing processes are suppressed or saturated at a very low short pulse called for in Ref. 1, we propose to inject level in our present problem. The electrostatic two parallel intense photons (laser, microwave, or any spectral density at the resonant plasma wavenumber k=k other relevant frequency electromagnetic waves)shone on P a plasma with plasma frequency matched to the beat is very intense with some other energies at the The frequency of the two photons: multiple forward Raman scattering. "P="O-"1' We believe the reason why backscattering is eLectromagnetic waves may have a very long pulse When the backscattering suppressed is the following. length. The two photons produce the beat plasma wave electrostatic plasma wave is excited, heavy Landau where kp=Op/c. and kp=ko-kl, In an underdamping by this plasma wave saturates the backscatterwP=wC-'dl dense plasma, the phase velocity of the beat plasma The phase velocity of the plasma wave is ing process. 3416 OOlS-9499/81/0600-3416$00.7501981 IEEE

The trapping v =w /?kO=(Wp/2WO). P P approximately by Av~=(~~ELv~/Ic~~)~,

width where

is

given Fig. I Photon beat

plasma oscillation electric a large number of electrons v -AyO, which yields the P the longitudinal wave as u eE -=- Ls (2) i$ . mw P The forward Raman process is the last process to be It can be argued saturated in this underdense plasma. that it will saturate only when the original electromagnetic wave has completely cascaded to waves near efficiency from CL==0. The maximum energy conversion P the electromagnetic waves to electrostatic waves and ultimately to particle energy may be estimated as rl max '1-(~p/oo)2. If two dimensional effects are taken side scattering comes in as well as into consideration, which make the detailed analysis much self-focusing, more complex. Experimental Support An experimental observation of the forward Raman process (instability) and associated electron acceleration/heating has recently been done6 in conjunction a CO2 laser is with the above concept and simulation: shone on an underdense plasma producing about 1.3 MeV electrons with eEO/moDc 0.3 and n/nc=0.22. In the experiment the laser emits only one beam so that the It is, therefore, in beat has to grow from the noise. general possible to have other competing processes such as side scatter, backscatter, two plasmon decay simulIn spite of these competing taneously taking place. processes, lower quivering velocity of the laser, and the experiment shows high energy (lower 0 /w 0 P' electrons. Conclusions A much larger flux of accelerated electrons (much higher luminocity) and somewhat more energetic electrons can be produced by the present laser beat accelerator than by the original concept of the laser 192 The laser beams may be electron accelerator. replaced by other electromagnetic waves of an approThe priate frequency for a different plasma density. unwanted instability effects such as side scattering may be adequately handled by this two-beam resonance. Acknowledgment This work was suonorted by U.S. Department of Energy grant number DElFG05-80ET 53088 and NSF PHY7901319. References 1. T. Tajima and J.M. Dawson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 267 (1979). 2. T. Tajima and J.M. Dawson, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. m, 4188 (1979). 3. J.M. Dawson and R. Shanny, Phys. Fluids 11, 1506 (1968). 4. A.T. Lin, J.M. Dawson, and H. Okuda, Phys. Fluids lJ, 1995 (1974). 5. M. Ashour-Abdalla, J.N. Leboeuf, T. Tajima, J.M. to be published in Phys. Dawson, and C.F. Kennel, Rev. A. 6. T. Tajima, C. Joshi, J.M. Dawson, H.A. Baldis, and to be submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. N.A. Ebrahim,

E is the L The condition that field. are trapped is given3 by saturation amplitude ELs for

Figures acceleration (a) t=240

by two beams (uO,kD) phase space

and (wl ,kl).

(x,p,) at

The electron

wil.

The maximum y,, for

Fig.

electrons is 85 in this case. (b) The logarithm of the electron distribution function at t=135 o-l. P The electromagnetic energy distribution as a function of mode numbers. Pumps k. and k are 1 indicated by arrows. (a) At t=142.5 ui'and, L (b) at t=240 wp?

; .~I:::~~,~:~~! 5,z i,. yi::;Y:.I::, .: j: -[:i:!::-,. .. .::.::::,.. .-l.:.:::._l,:i:il..-i :~ .:::::::._: 1. :::::: ::.::. .i .::.;: .;; :..I 1 I ,::.::::::.:::: ::.: : [;;:.: .:.:,::..: ..:i ;:,;i: :.Y -:.::.::. i:,: :.:.::.:_:._ .i .j / ),, ) I .~~~~~~:_---472 850 0 189

Fig.

I-k, (a) ..--iko1rI .-.- ~

S(k) 34 k6* 102 0 34 k68 102

Fig.

3417