A PROOF-OF-PRINCIPLE EXPERIMENT FOR A STRUCTURE-LOADED CO2 LASER-DRIVEN ELECTRON ACCELERATOR IN VACUUM

The experimental realization of structure-loaded laser- driven particle acceleration in vacuum is crucial for developing next-generation high-gradient particle accelerators. We report the status of a proof-of-principle experiment for structure-loaded laser-driven electron acceleration. A single-stage CO2 laser-driven accelerator is fabricated and optically tested for providing 150 keV energy gain to a 70 MeV electron beam over a 10-cm stage length. A resonant-type lens-array accelerator structure consisting of 16 properly phased acceleration stages is also fabricated and optically tested for realizing multi-stage laser-driven electron acceleration in vacuum. In this paper, we present the acceleration scheme, structure fabrication, challenges, goals, and status of the experiment.