Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Laser plasma acceleration (LPA) up to 1 GeV has been realized at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by using a capillary discharge waveguide. In this paper, the capillary discharge guided LPA system including a broadband single-shot electron spectrometer is described. The spectrometer was designed specifically for LPA experiments and has amomentumacceptance of 0.01 - 1.1 GeV/c with a percent level resolution. Experiments using a 33 mm long, 300 mu m diameter capillary demonstrated the generation of high energy electron beams up to 1 GeV. By de-tuning discharge delay from optimum guiding performance, selftrapping and acceleration were found to be stabilized producing 460 MeV electron beams.