Laser wakefield acceleration experiments were carried out using hydrogen-filled capillary discharge waveguides. For a 33 mm long, 300 mu m capillary, parameter regimes with high energy electron beams (up to 1 GeV) and stable 0.5 GeV were found. In the high energy regime, the electron beam peak energy was correlated with the number of trapped electrons. For a 15 mm long, 200 mu m diameter capillary, quasi-monoenergetic e beams up to 300 MeV were observed. By de-tuning discharge delay from optimum guiding performance, self-trapping was found to be stabilized.

A summary of progress at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is given on: (1) experiments on down-ramp injection; (2) experiments on acceleration in capillary discharge plasma channels; and (3) simulations of a staged laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA). Control of trapping in a LWFA using plasma density down-ramps produced electron bunches with absolute longitudinal and transverse momentum spreads more than ten times lower than in previous experiments (0.17 and 0.02 MeV Ic FWHM, respectively) and with central momenta of 0.76 +- 0.02 MeV Ic, stable over a week of operation. Experiments were also carried out using a 40 TW laser interacting with a hydrogen-filled capillary discharge waveguide. For a 15 mm long, 200 mu m diameter capillary, quasi-monoenergetic bunches up to 300 MeV were observed. By detuning discharge delay from optimum guiding performance, self-trapping was found to be stabilized. For a 33 mm long, 300 mu m capillary, a parameter regime with high energy bunches, up to 1 Ge V, was found. In this regime, peak electron energy was correlated with the amount of trapped charge. Simulations show that bunches produced on a down-ramn and iniected into a channel-guided LWFA can produce stable beams with 0.2 MeV Ic-class momentum spread at high energies.

The electron energy dependence of a scintillating screen (Lanex Fast) was studied with sub-nanosecond electron beams ranging from 106 MeV to 1522 MeV at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Advanced Light Source (ALS) synchrotron booster accelerator. The sensitivity of the Lanex Fast decreased by 1percent per 100 MeV increase of the energy. The linear response of the screen against the charge was verified with charge density and intensity up to 160 pC/mm2 and 0.4 pC/ps/mm2, respectively. For electron beams from the laser plasma accelerator, a comprehensive study of charge diagnostics has been performed using a Lanex screen, an integrating current transformer, and an activation based measurement. The charge measured by each diagnostic was found to be within +/-10 percent.

Laser-plasma-based accelerators can provide electrons over a broad energy range and/or with large momentum spread. The electron beam energy distribution can be controlled via accurate control of laser and plasma properties, and beams with energies ranging from "0.5 to 1000 MeV have been observed. Measuring these energy distributions in a single shot requires the use of a diagnostic with large momentum acceptance and, ideally, sufficient resolution to accurately measure energy spread in the case of narrow energy spread. Such a broadband single-shot electron magnetic spectrometer for GeV-class laser-plasma-based accelerators has been developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A detailed description of the hardware and the design concept is presented, as well as a performance evaluation of the spectrometer. The spectrometer covered electron beam energies raging from 0.01 to 1.1 GeV in a single shot, and enabled the simultaneous measurement of the laser properties at the exit of the accelerator through the use of a sufficiently large pole gap. Based on measured field maps and 3rd-order transport analysis, a few percent-level resolution and determination of the absolute energy were achieved over the entire energy range. Laser-plasma-based accelerator experiments demonstrated the capability of the spectrometer as a diagnostic and its suitability for such a broadband electron source.

esults are presented on the generation of quasi-monoenergeticelectron beams with energy up to 1GeV using a 40TW laser and a 3.3 cm-long hydrogen-filled capillary discharge waveguide. Electron beams were not observed without a plasma channel, indicating that self-focusing alone could not be relied upon for effective guidingof the laser pulse. Results are presented of the electronbeam spectra, and the dependence of the reliability of producingelectron beams as a function of laser and plasma parameters.

Laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFA) can produce electric fields of order 10-100 GV/m suitable for acceleration of electrons to relativistic energies. The wakefields are excited by a relativistically intense laser pulse propagating through a plasma and have a phase velocity determined by the group velocity of the light pulse. Two important effects that can limit the acceleration distanceand hence the net energy gain obtained by an electron are diffraction of the drive laser pulse and particle-wake dephasing. Diffraction of a focused ultra-short laser pulse can be overcome by using preformed plasma channels. The dephasing limit can be increased by operating at a lower plasma density, since this results in an increase in the laser group velocity. Here we present detailed results on the generation of GeV-class electron beams using an intense femtosecond laser beamand a 3.3 cm long preformed discharge-based plasma channel [W.P. Leemans et al., Nature Physics 2, 696-699 (2006)]. The use of a discharge-based waveguide permitted operation at an order ofmagnitude lower density and 15 times longer distance than in previous experiments that relied on laser preformed plasma channels. Laser pulses with peak power ranging from 10-50 TW were guided over more than 20 Rayleigh ranges and high-quality electron beams with energy up to 1 GeV were obtained by channelling a 40 TW peak power laser pulse. The dependence of the electron beam characteristics on capillary properties, plasma density, and laser parameters are discussed.