Second generation beatwave experiments at UCLA

The NEPTUNE Laboratory, under construction at UCLA, will be a user facility for exploring concepts useful for advanced accelerators. The primary programmatic goal for the laboratory is to inject extremely high-quality electron bunches into a laser-driven plasma beat wave accelerator and explore ideas for extracting a high-quality ΔE/E<0.1, ε<10 π mm mrad), high-energy (100 MeV) beam from a plasma structure operating at about 1 THz and about 3 GeV/m. The lab will combine an upgraded MARS CO2 laser and the state-of-the-art SATURNUS RF gun and linac, also undergoing an upgrade. The new MARS laser will be about 1 TW (100 J, 100 ps), up from 0.2 TW (70 J, 350 ps). This allows for doubling the spot size of the laser beam and thereby quadrupling the interaction length while still driving gradients of 3 GeV/m. The large diameter of the accelerating structure relative to the injected electron bunches (10 :1 ratio) will minimize the deleterious effects of the radial dependence of the accelerating field and soften the radial focusing thus permitting, in principle, the extraction of a high-quality accelerated beam.