Prospects for an Integrated Experimental Demonstration of a Channel-Guided, Standard Laser Wakefield Accelerator

Summary form only given. The channel-guided, standard laser wakefield accelerator (CGS-LWFA) is a laser-driven plasma-based accelerator concept that has the potential to produce high quality accelerated electron bunches over extremely short acceleration distances. Operation in the short pulse or "standard" regime would provide strong, stable accelerating fields, and the use of a plasma channel would provide optical guiding over many Rayleigh lengths. Recent theoretical studies have shown that the energy and beam quality requirements on the injected electron bunch are significantly less stressing than previously thought. An injected electron bunch with modest energy and large energy spread may produce a high quality final accelerated electron bunch if laser, plasma, and electron bunch parameters are properly chosen. In addition, there have been significant experimental advances in all-optical injectors and plasma channel creation techniques. However, the presence of density gradients at the entrance of the plasma channel may seriously affect the trapping of externally-injected electrons by the laser-generated wakefield. The implications for planned LWFA experiments at the Naval Research Laboratory using a new 10 TW Ti-sapphire laser system will be discussed