Abstract
Though wakefield acceleration in crystal channels has been previously proposed, x-ray wakefield acceleration has only recently become a realistic possibility since the invention of the single-cycled optical laser compression technique. We investigate the acceleration due to a wakefield induced by a coherent, ultrashort x-ray pulse guided by a nanoscale channel inside a solid material. By two-dimensional particle-in-cell computer simulations, we show that an acceleration gradient of TeV/cm is attainable. This is about 3 orders of magnitude stronger than that of the conventional plasma-based wakefield accelerations, which implies the possibility of an extremely compact scheme to attain ultrahigh energies. In addition to particle acceleration, this scheme can also induce the emission of high energy photons at ∼O(10-100) MeV. Our simulations confirm such high energy photon emissions, which is in contrast with that induced by the optical laser driven wakefield scheme. In addition to this, the significantly improved emittance of the energetic electrons has been discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101004 |
| Journal | Physical Review Accelerators and Beams |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The work has been supported by the Norman Rostorker Fund, and was further supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 11374319, No. 11125526, No. 11335013, No. 11674339 and No. 11127901), the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0401102), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB16), and the China Scholarship Council. We thank the dedicated effort of Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics in realization of the thin film compression [49]. Toshiki Tajima thanks the Einstein Professorship of the Chinese Academy of Science and Professor Ruxin Li for his kindness to have hosted Toshiki Tajima as Einstein Professor, from which this work started and which in part supported this work, including that of Xiaomei Zhang.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, American Physical Society. All rights reserved.