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Laura Corner

Publications and source records attributed to Laura Corner.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Controlling external injection in laser-plasma accelerators with terahertz frequency bunch manipulation

Laser-plasma wakefield acceleration (LWFA) offers ultrahigh accelerating gradients in compact setups, but the complex non-linear nature of the process makes it challenging to generate high-quality beams. Injection of electron bunches from an external source into a plasma accelerator provides a promising route to improved performance; however, electron bunches from conventional radio-frequency (RF)-based injectors suffer from non-linear compression and laser-beam asynchrony, leading to energy jitter and emittance growth. We present a fundamental concept of terahertz-controlled electron bunches for external injection into LWFA. This terahertz-frequency approach provides temporal locking between the electron beam and the drive laser, and enables the compression of high-quality beams to sub-10-fs durations before injection into the LWFA. Numerical simulations demonstrate that GeV-scale acceleration with excellent beam quality and stability -- energy jitter and energy spread around 0.2% -- can be achieved using this method. This concept opens new opportunities for stable, multi-stage laser-driven accelerators and supports the development of next-generation applications such as free-electron lasers (FELs).

physics.acc-ph↗
arXiv2025

Two-colour balanced optical cross-correlator using fibre-coupled PPLN waveguides

We present a two-colour fully fibre-coupled balanced optical cross-correlator (BOXC) based on sum-frequency generation (SFG) between 1560 nm and 800 nm laser pulses using waveguides implemented in type-0 phase-matched periodically poled LiNbO$_{3}$ (PPLN) crystals. The interaction has an effective nonlinear coefficient of $d_{eff}$ = 16.1 pm/V, many times higher than comparable nonlinear crystals used for this SFG interaction such as barium borate (BBO). The resulting sensitivity of the cross-correlator is measured to be 5.11 mV/fs, five times greater than current bulk-optic BOXCs after accounting for differences in transimpedance gain and photodetector responsivity, with the potential for significantly higher sensitivity after optimisations to the cross-correlator design.

physics.optics↗
arXiv2025

Design Initiative for a 10 TeV pCM Wakefield Collider

This document outlines a community-driven Design Study for a 10 TeV pCM Wakefield Accelerator Collider. The 2020 ESPP Report emphasized the need for Advanced Accelerator R\&D, and the 2023 P5 Report calls for the ``delivery of an end-to-end design concept, including cost scales, with self-consistent parameters throughout." This Design Study leverages recent experimental and theoretical progress resulting from a global R\&D program in order to deliver a unified, 10 TeV Wakefield Collider concept. Wakefield Accelerators provide ultra-high accelerating gradients which enables an upgrade path that will extend the reach of Linear Colliders beyond the electroweak scale. Here, we describe the organization of the Design Study including timeline and deliverables, and we detail the requirements and challenges on the path to a 10 TeV Wakefield Collider.

physics.acc-ph↗
arXiv2025

HALHF: a hybrid, asymmetric, linear Higgs factory using plasma- and RF-based acceleration

HALHF is a hybrid linear collider that uses electron-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration to accelerate electrons to high energy while using radio-frequency cavity technology to accelerate positrons. The most cost-effective solution collides low-energy positrons with high-energy electrons, producing a boost to the final state in the electron direction with $\gamma= 1.67$. The current HALHF baseline design produces a luminosity comparable to that of the baseline ILC but with a greatly reduced construction and carbon footprint and hence much lower cost than the mature linear-collider designs ILC and CLIC. Costs for HALHF are evaluated, together with that for the approximate 15-year R\&D programme necessary to realise HALHF. Time scales and cost for the R\&D are estimated. Upgrade paths for HALHF technology from a 250~GeV Higgs factory, through 380 and 550~GeV, up to 10~TeV are sketched.

physics.acc-ph↗
arXiv2023

Resonant excitation of plasma waves in a plasma channel

We demonstrate resonant excitation of a plasma wave by a train of short laser pulses guided in a pre-formed plasma channel, for parameters relevant to a plasma-modulated plasma accelerator (P-MoPA). We show experimentally that a train of $N \approx 10$ short pulses, of total energy $\sim 1$ J, can be guided through $110$ mm long plasma channels with on-axis densities in the range $10^{17} - 10^{18}$ cm$^{-3}$. The spectrum of the transmitted train is found to be strongly red-shifted when the plasma period is tuned to the intra-train pulse spacing. Numerical simulations are found to be in excellent agreement with the measurements and indicate that the resonantly excited plasma waves have an amplitude in the range $3$ - $10$ GV m$^{-1}$, corresponding to an accelerator stage energy gain of order $1$ GeV.

physics.acc-ph↗
arXiv2020

Introduction to Laser Physics

This paper is a basic introduction to laser physics, especially that relevant to accelerator science. It presents the essential physics of a laser, some of the different types of laser system available, the propagation of laser beams, and the key diagnostics that are used for lasers.

physics.acc-ph↗
arXiv2018

Hydrodynamic, Optically-Field-Ionized (HOFI) Plasma Channels

We present experiments and numerical simulations which demonstrate that fully-ionized, low-density plasma channels could be formed by hydrodynamic expansion of plasma columns produced by optical field ionization (OFI). Simulations of the hydrodynamic expansion of plasma columns formed in hydrogen by an axicon lens show the generation of \unit[200]{mm} long plasma channels with axial densities of order $n_e(0) = 1 \times 10^{17} cm^{-3}$ and lowest-order modes of spot size $W_M \approx 40 \mu m$. These simulations show that the laser energy required to generate the channels is modest: of order 1 mJ per centimetre of channel. The simulations are confirmed by experiments with a spherical lens which show the formation of short plasma channels with $1.5 \times 10^{17}cm^{-3} \lesssim n_e(0) \lesssim 1 \times 10^{18} cm^{-3}$ and $61 \mu m \gtrsim W_M \gtrsim 33 \mu m$. Low-density plasma channels of this type would appear to be well-suited as multi-GeV laser-plasma accelerator stages capable of long-term operation at high pulse repetition rates.

physics.plasm-ph↗
arXiv2017

Excitation and Control of Plasma Wakefields by Multiple Laser Pulses

We demonstrate experimentally the resonant excitation of plasma waves by trains of laser pulses. We also take an important first step to achieving an energy recovery plasma accelerator by showing that unused wakefield energy can be removed by an out-of-resonance trailing laser pulse. The measured laser wakefields are found to be in excellent agreement with analytical and numerical models of wakefield excitation in the linear regime. Our results indicate a promising direction for achieving highly controlled, GeV-scale laser-plasma accelerators operating at multi-kilohertz repetition rates. This article was published in Physical Review Letters 119, 044802 on 27 July 2017. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.044802 Copyright 2017 American Physical Society.

physics.plasm-ph↗