- Accepted Paper
Controlling external injection in laser-plasma accelerators with terahertz frequency bunch manipulation
Phys. Rev. Research - Accepted 9 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wb14-xvj2
Phys. Rev. Research - Accepted 9 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wb14-xvj2
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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