An electron source is a crucial component of any accelerator facility, as it defines the scientific reach and capabilities of accelerator applications. Therefore, detailed modeling of electron emission along with advanced growth and characterization of cathode materials are required to enhance emission capabilities of cathodes. This presentation will review the practices being developed at...
Muons and their applications in tomography of large objects have recently gained significant interest within the accelerator physics community. However, the lack of portable muon sources has limited muon tomography to relying on cosmic rays, which have a typical flux of $F~1 s^-1 cm^-2$ at ground level for muon energies above 1 GeV. This low flux restricts muon tomography to objects that...
The characterization and mitigation of collective beam effects, particular coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR), represents an important challenge in facilitating the development of particle accelerators with higher beam brightness. Among the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature, the use of appropriately configured shielding walls to curb CSR remains an promising area of research...
The wakefield accelerators, based on THz and mm-wave structures, is an active area of research aiming at a severalfold higher accelerating field and better wall plug power efficiency than conventional linear accelerators. Concurrently to accelerator development additional components are required for constant beam parameters and position monitoring. As the electron beam passes through a metal...
We report on the ongoing commissioning of a prototype Electro-Optic Sampling Beam Position Monitor (EOS-BPM) at the FACET-II Facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. In EOS-BPM, a birefringence is induced in two electro-optic crystals on either side of the electron beam's trajectory as it passes by. Laser pulses traveling through each crystal pick up a spacially encoded polarization...
We report a single-shot diagnosis of electron energy evolution in a curved laser wakefield accelerator by using the streaked betatron x rays. The streaking of the betatron x rays was realized by launching a laser pulse into a plasma with a transverse density gradient. In such a plasma, laser wavefront tilt develops gradually due to phase velocity differences in different plasma densities. The...
Next-generation accelerator concepts, which hinge on the precise shaping of beam distributions, demand equally precise diagnostic methods capable of reconstructing beam distributions within 6-dimensional position-momentum spaces. However, the characterization of intricate features within 6-dimensional beam distributions using current diagnostic techniques necessitates a substantial number of...
Coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) is a limiting effect in linear accelerators with dispersive elements due to its contribution to projected transverse emittance growth. This effect becomes a limitation for highly compressed beams. Even though CSR-induced projected emittance growth has been widely studied, conventional measurement techniques are not detailed enough to resolve the...
Free electron lasers (FEL) are powerful scientific tools for a wide variety of applications which require bright, coherent X-ray light. FELs require electron beams with high requirements on brightness, as well as alignment and matching into the undulators. At the Hundred Terawatt Undulator (HTU) system at the BELLA Center, we are aiming to demonstrate a compact Laser-Plasma Accelerator...
While the well-known transition radiation usually has negligible impact on high-energy beams, high-current beams such as those from the FACET-II facility can be strongly self-focused by the near field of transition radiation when passing through multiple closely spaced foils. This extreme focusing of high-energy beams opens a new physics frontier with unprecedented densities, potentially...
Reducing the size of free-electron laser (FEL) light sources relies on producing bright electron beams and preserving the beam brightness during acceleration and beam manipulation. The laser-assisted bunch compression (LABC) scheme is a promising technique to significantly enhance the beam current for a very low emittance beam. We explore the application of the LABC scheme to a compact FEL...
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) offer an attractive alternative to conventional accelerators, enabling the acceleration of high-brightness electron beams to ultra-relativistic energies using compact, table-top setups. However, LPAs and their applications are plagued by intrinsic shot-to-shot instability largely attributed to fast fluctuations (>1 Hz) and long-term drifts (<1 Hz) in the...
Conventional beam-transport optics, such as quadrupole magnets, are problematic for staging of plasma accelerators, mainly due to their footprint and chromaticity. This causes emittance growth and potentially charge loss. Based on the results obtained by Steinke et al. [1] and further developments on plasma lenses by Lindstrøm et al. [2], we propose an achromatic lattice using a new type of...