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Improved electron beam stability in laser wakefield acceleration through control of laser angular chirp and wavefront stability

Zhan Jin1,2,*, Yan-Jun Gu1,2, Shingo Sato1, Nobuhiko Nakanii2,3, Kai Huang2,3, Izuru Daito3, Toshiya Muto1, Yoshio Mizuta1, Szuba Wojciech2 et al.

Masaki Kando1,2,3 and Tomonao Hosokai1,2

  • *Contact author: jin@sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043090 – Published 23 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rsvg-r3bg

Abstract

Stable operation of laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) is essential for future applications of compact radiation sources and advanced accelerators. In this work, we investigate stabilization of LWFA electron beams through control of laser angular chirp and wavefront stability. We show that angular chirp strongly affects beam pointing stability and identify an instability-transfer chain that links laser-pointing fluctuations to group-delay dispersion, pulse-front tilt, and electron beam pointing jitter. Stabilization of the laser transport environment, including vacuum beam transport and thermal control, reduces wavefront fluctuations and improves beam stability in energy, charge, and pointing by factors of 2–4, enabling improved control of beam quality.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043090– Published 23 October, 2026
  • Received 30 April 2026
  • Accepted 2 October 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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