Self-truncated ionization injection and consequent monoenergetic electron bunches in laser wakefield acceleration

Abstract: The ionization-induced injection in laser wakefield acceleration has been recently demonstrated to be a promising injection scheme. However, the energy spread controlling in this mechanism remains a challenge because continuous injection in a mixed gas target is usually inevitable. Here we propose that by use of certain initially unmatched laser pulses, the electron injection can be constrained to the very front region of the mixed gas target, typically in a length of a few hundreds micro meters determined by laser-driven bubble deformation. Under some optimized conditions, the injection region is well limited within $200\rm \mu m$ and the electron beam with central energy of 383 MeV, energy spread of 3.33% in FWHM, normalized emittance of 3.12 mm mrad and charge of 14.58 pC can be obtained according to particle-in-cell simulations. Both multi-dimensional simulations and theoretical analysis illustrate the effectiveness of this scheme.