Pepper-pot emittance measurement of laser-plasma wakefield accelerated electrons

Abstract

The transverse emittance is an important parameter governing the brightness of an electron beam. Here we present the first pepper-pot measurement of the transverse emittance for a mono-energetic electron beam from a laser-plasma wakefield accelerator, carried out on the Advanced Laser-Plasma High Energy Accelerators towards X-Rays (ALPHA-X) beam line. Mono-energetic electrons are passed through an array of 52 μm diameter holes in a tungsten mask. The pepper-pot results set an upper limit for the normalised emittance at 5.5 ± 1 π mm mrad for an 82 MeV beam.