Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Staging Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs) is necessary in order to reach beam energies of 100 GeV and above. This requires incoupling of additional laser beams into accelerating stages. In order to maintain the high average accelerating gradient of a staged LPA, it is imperative to minimize the distance that is needed for laser incoupling. A plasma mirror is proposed as the final coupling optic reducing the coupling distance from tens of meters, using a conventional optic, to as small as a few cm. Both a planar water jet and a nitrocellulose foil are used as reflecting surfacesand characterized. A maximum reflectivity of 70percent was obtained using both surfaces.