Pulse Front Tilt Steering in Laser Plasma Accelerators*

Laser wakefield accelerators can produce electron beams with energies up to several GeVs, which paves the way for many applications from high-energy physics to radiation biology. However, the beam pointing and emittance have still to be improved for most applications.

We investigated the effect of laser pulse front tilt on electron beam deflection. While laser pulses can have several types of spatiotemporal couplings, those affecting the pulse envelope are most relevant as the laser wake is driven by the pulse envelope.

In presence of pulse front tilt, the deformation of the wake leads to electron steering. We propose a quantitative model for electron steering, that is validated with particle-in-cell simulations and experiments on the BELLA PetaWatt laser at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.