https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06601-9
Regular Article
Enhancing the energy of the produced electron bunch in laser–plasma interaction: effects of transverse injection and various density profiles
1
Physics Department, University of Birjand, 9717434765, Birjand, South Khorasan, Iran
2
Laser and Plasma Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University, 1983969411, Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Received:
17
April
2025
Accepted:
29
June
2025
Published online:
16
July
2025
Plasma-based accelerators are a compelling alternative to conventional radio-frequency accelerators, offering the potential for significantly higher accelerating gradients. In these systems, a plasma channel is crucial for extending the dephasing and laser pulse propagation lengths, enabling the acceleration of electron bunches to high energies. This work investigates a plasma channel design featuring a low-density core with rippled-density variations, surrounded by a higher-density plasma. Using fully relativistic particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate that this tailored channel structure significantly enhances energy gain compared to a simple homogeneous plasma channel. Our key finding is that the combination of transverse injection and oscillatory inhomogeneity within this plasma channel enhances the wakefield intensity, leading to an increase in the maximum achievable electron bunch energy (reaching approximately 
in our simulations). We also present a detailed analysis of the impact of channel density, surrounding plasma density, and laser parameters such as period and wavelength on the acceleration process.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
