Ultrarelativistic electron beams accelerated by terawatt scalable kHz laser

Abstract

We show the laser-driven acceleration of unprecedented, collimated (2 mrad divergence), and quasi-monoenergetic (25% energy spread) electron beams with energy up to 50 MeV at 1 kHz repetition rate. The laser driver is a multi-cycle ( 15 fs ) 1 kHz optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system, operating at 26 mJ ( 1.7 TW ). The scalability of the driver laser technology and the electron beams reported in this work pave the way toward developing high-brilliance x-ray sources for medical imaging and innovative devices for brain cancer treatment and represent a step toward the realization of a kHz GeV electron beamline.