• Accepted Paper

Controlling external injection in laser-plasma accelerators with terahertz frequency bunch manipulation

Aras Amini, Lewis R. Reid, James K. Jones, Morgan T. Hibberd, Laura Corner, Darren M. Graham, Steven P. Jamison, Graeme Burt, and Robert B. Appleby

Phys. Rev. Research - Accepted 9 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wb14-xvj2

Abstract

Laser-plasma wakefield acceleration (LWFA) offers ultrahigh accelerating gradients in compact setups, but the complex non-linear nature of the process makes it challenging to generate high-quality beams. Injection of electron bunches from an external source into a plasma accelerator provides a promising route to improved performance; however, electron bunches from conventional radio-frequency (RF)-based injectors suffer from non-linear compression and laser-beam asynchrony, leading to energy jitter and emittance growth. We present a new concept of terahertz-controlled electron bunches for external injection into LWFA. This terahertz-frequency approach provides temporal locking between the electron beam and the drive laser, and enables the compression of high-quality beams to sub-10-fs durations before injection into the LWFA. Numerical simulations demonstrate that GeV-scale acceleration with excellent beam quality and stability—energy jitter and energy spread around 0.2%—can be achieved using this method. This concept opens new opportunities for stable, multi-stage laser-driven accelerators and supports the development of next-generation applications such as free-electron lasers (FELs), plasma-based colliders, and direct injection into storage rings.

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