Frank Mayet

Simulations and Plans for Possible DLA Experiments at SINBAD

Abstract In this work we present the outlines of possible experiments for dielectric laser acceleration (DLA) of ultra-short relativistic electron bunches produced by the ARES linac, currently under construction at the SINBAD facility (DESY Hamburg). The experiments are to be performed as part of the Accelerator on a Chip International Program (ACHIP), funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. At SINBAD we plan to test the acceleration of already pre-accelerated relativistic electron bunches in laser-illuminated dielectric grating structures. We present outlines of both the acceleration of ultra-short single bunches, as well as the option to accelerate phase-synchronous sub-fs microbunch trains. Here the electron bunch is conditioned prior to the injection by interaction with an external laser field in an undulator. This generates a sinusoidal energy modulation that is transformed into periodic microbunches in a subsequent chicane. The phase synchronization is achieved by driving both the modulation process and the DLA with the same laser pulse. In addition to the conceptual layouts and plans of the experiments we present start-to-end simulation results for different ARES working points.

Status and objectives of the dedicated accelerator R&D facility “SINBAD” at DESY

We present a status update on the dedicated R\&D facility SINBAD which is currently under construction at DESY. The facility will host multiple independent experiments on the acceleration of ultra-short electron bunches and novel, high gradient acceleration methods. The first experiment is the ARES-experiment with a normal conducting 100\,MeV S-band linac at its core. We present the objectives of this experiment ranging from the study of compression techniques to sub-fs level to its application as injector for various advanced acceleration schemes e.g. the plans to use ARES as a test-site for DLA experiments in the context of the ACHIP collaboration. The time-line including the planned extension with laser driven plasma-wakefield acceleration is presented. The second initial experiment is AXSIS which aims to accelerate fs-electron bunches to 15\,MeV in a THz driven dielectric structure and subsequently create X-rays by inverse Compton scattering.

Simulation of deflecting structures for dielectric laser driven accelerators

Abstract In laser illuminated dielectric accelerators (DLA) high acceleration gradients can be achieved, due to high damage thresholds of the materials at optical frequencies. This is a necessity in developing more compact particle accelerator technologies. The Accelerator on a CHip International Program funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is researching such devices. Means to manipulate the beam, i.e. focusing and deflection, are needed for the proper operation of such devices. These means should rely on the same technologies for manufacturing and powering like the accelerating structures. In this study different concepts for dielectric laser driven deflecting structures are investigated via particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and compared afterwards. The comparison is conducted with respect to the suitability for beam manipulation. Another interesting application will be investigated as a diagnostic device for ultra short electron bunches from conventional accelerators functioning like a radio frequency transverse deflecting cavity (TDS).

Using short Drive Laser Pulses to Achieve Net Focusing Forces in Tailored Dual Grating Dielectric Structures

Abstract Laser-driven grating type DLA (Dielectric Laser Accelerator) structures have been shown to produce accelerating gradients on the order of GeV/m. In simple β -matched grating structures due to the nature of the laser induced steady-state in-channel fields the per period forces on the particles are mostly in longitudinal direction. Even though strong transverse magnetic and electric fields are present, the net focusing effect over one period at maximum energy gain is negligible in the case of relativistic electrons. Stable acceleration of realistic electron beams in a DLA channel however requires the presence of significant net transverse forces. In this work we simulate and study the effect of using the transient temporal shape of short Gaussian drive laser pulses in order to achieve suitable field configurations for potentially stable acceleration of relativistic electrons in the horizontal plane. In order to achieve this, both the laser pulse and the grating geometry are optimized. Simulations conducted with the Particle-In-Cell code VSim 7.2 are shown for both the transient and steady state/long pulse case. Finally we investigate how the drive laser phase dependence of the focusing forces could affect a potential DLA-based focusing lattice.

Full PIC simulation of a first ACHIP experiment @ SINBAD

Abstract In laser illuminated dielectric accelerators (DLA) high acceleration gradients can be achieved due to high damage thresholds of the materials at optical frequencies. This is a necessity for developing more compact particle accelerator technologies. The Accelerator on a CHip International Program (ACHIP) funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is researching such devices. DESY Hamburg is part of the collaboration. The dedicated accelerator research facility SINBAD is particularly well suited for DLA experiments at relativistic electron energies. High quality beams and short bunch lengths are anticipated from the ARES linac which is currently under construction at SINBAD. The aim of the experiment is the injection of a short electron bunch from the ARES linac into a DLA. In this study the results of one of the first possible experiments at the facility are estimated via a combination of particle-in-cell (PIC) and tracking simulations. ASTRA is used to simulate an electron bunch from the ARES linac at a suitable working point. The dielectric part of the setup will be simulated using the PIC code from CST Particle Studio incorporating the retrieved bunch from the ASTRA simulation. The energy spectra of the electron bunches are calculated as would be measured from a spectrometer dipole with and without the laser fields.

A Fast Particle Tracking Tool for the Simulation of Dielectric Laser Accelerators

In order to simulate the beam dynamics in grating based Dielectric Laser Accelerators (DLA) fully self-consistent PIC codes are usually employed. These codes model the evolution of both the electromagnetic fields inside a laser-driven DLA and the beam phase space very accurately. The main drawback of these codes is that they are computationally very expensive. While the simulation of a single DLA period is feasible with these codes, long multi-period structures cannot be studied without access to HPC clusters. We present a fast particle tracking tool for the simulation of long DLA structures. DLATracker is a parallelized code based on the analytical reconstruction of the in-channel electromagnetic fields and a Boris/Vay-type particle pusher. Its computational kernel is written in OpenCL and can run on both CPUs and GPUs. The main code is following a modular approach and is written in Python 2.7. This way the code can be easiliy extended for different use cases. In order to benchmark the code, simulation results are compared to results obtained with the PIC code VSim 7.2. INTRODUCTION The concept of dielectric laser accelerators (DLA) has gained increasing attention in accelerator research, because of the high achievable acceleration gradients (∼GeV/m) [1]. This is due to the high damage threshold of dielectrics at optical frequencies. In order to simulate the interaction of the incoming electron bunch with the electromagnetic fields inside the laser illuminated dielectric structure self-consistent Particle-In-Cell (PIC) codes are usually employed. This way both the evolution of the fields inside the acceleration channel and the beam dynamics can be simulated very accurately. The main drawback of PIC codes is that they can be computationally very expensive and thus are usually used on HPC clusters. In this work we focus on so called grating type DLAs (see Fig. 1). In the context of the Accelerator on a CHip International Program (ACHIP) the typical period length of a grating DLA is 2 micron and the channel width <1 micron. The in-channel fields can be decomposed into an infinite sum of so called spatial harmonics (see section Theoretical Background) [2]. In order to resolve higher harmonic contributions to the field, a sufficiently high spatial grid resolution has to be used. Together with the well-known Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy stability condition [3] for time domain algorithms