%0 Journal Article
%T Energy limitation of laser-plasma electron accelerators
%A D. E. Cardenas
%A S. Chou
%A J. Xu
%A L. Hofmann
%A A. Buck
%A K. Schmid
%A C. M. S. Sears
%A D. E. Rivas
%A B. Shen
%A L. Veisz
%J Physics
%D 2015
%I arXiv
%X We report on systematic and high-precision measurements of dephasing, an effect that fundamentally limits the performance of laser wakefield accelerators. Utilizing shock-front injection, a technique providing stable, tunable and high-quality electron bunches, acceleration and deceleration of few-MeV quasi-monoenergetic beams were measured with sub-5-fs and 8-fs laser pulses. Typical density dependent electron energy evolution with 65-300 micrometers dephasing length and 6-20 MeV peak energy was observed and is well described with a simple model.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.05732v2