Efficient acceleration of high-quality GeV-electron bunches in a hybrid laser- and beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator

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Foerster, F. M. and Ayache, M. and Bi, Z. and Cerchez, M. and Corde, S. and Döpp, A. and Haberstroh, F. and Habib, A. F. and Heinemann, T. and Hidding, B. and Irman, A. and Irshad, F. and Kononenko, O. and LaBerge, M. and Ossa, A. Martinez de la and Münzer, A. and Peña, F. and Schilling, G. and Schöbel, S. and Schramm, U. and Sharan, S. and Travac, E. and Ufer, P. and Weiße, N. and Zeuner, M. and Zirkelbach, J. and Karsch, S. (2026) Efficient acceleration of high-quality GeV-electron bunches in a hybrid laser- and beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator. Other. arXiv. (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.24107)

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Abstract

Plasma-based accelerators are compact and provide high gradients, yet their practical use has been limited by energy gain, stability, beam quality, and energy transfer efficiency. Here, we address several of these challenges simultaneously using a hybrid scheme in which an electron bunch from a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) drives a subsequent plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) stage with internal witness injection. Close to driver depletion in the PWFA stage, we obtain witness bunches with higher electron energy, reduced energy spread and divergence, and higher angular-spectral charge density compared to LWFA alone. We report energy transformer ratios approaching~2, and about 20\% of the initial energy in the drive beam was transferred to the witness bunch, thereby achieving a driver-to-witness energy transfer efficiency that largely surpasses that of all previous PWFA experiments.

ORCID iDs

Foerster, F. M., Ayache, M., Bi, Z., Cerchez, M., Corde, S., Döpp, A., Haberstroh, F., Habib, A. F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2108-8702, Heinemann, T., Hidding, B. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5827-0041, Irman, A., Irshad, F., Kononenko, O., LaBerge, M., Ossa, A. Martinez de la, Münzer, A., Peña, F., Schilling, G., Schöbel, S., Schramm, U., Sharan, S., Travac, E., Ufer, P., Weiße, N., Zeuner, M., Zirkelbach, J. and Karsch, S.;
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