A Non-Destructive Single-Shot Electron Timing Diagnostic in Laser Wakefield Acceleration via Electro-Optic Sampling

Abstract

Laser wakefield acceleration has been well recognized as a compact advanced acceleration regime with extremely high acceleration gradient. For the application concerns, the temporal information of the electron bunches from laser wakefield acceleration is of great importance. For single shot monitoring of such a parameter, we introduced the electro-optic spatial decoding technique to the research of laser wakefield acceleration. Interesting phenomena were observed when detecting the Coulomb field of the electron bunch at a position very close to the plasma source. The relative timings of electron bunches were detected for various plasma densities and physics behind were investigated. Temporal multi-bunch structures were observed. The smearing process of the electro-optic spatial decoding was detailly discussed. Our research demonstrated the capability of electro-optic sampling technique as a single-shot electron temporal monitor for laser plasma acceleration studies.