2026-10-07T05:49:39Z https://www.scidb.cn/oai

10.57760/sciencedb.37559 2026-05-21T14:00:18Z

2026-05-21 Soft X-ray Free-Electron Lasers Driven by Hybrid Laser- and Beam-Driven Plasma Wakefield Accelerators doi:10.57760/sciencedb.37559 en Laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerator (LWFA) and beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) are two prominent approaches in the field of high-gradient plasma-based accelerators (PBAs). In this work, we propose and systematically demonstrate, through numerical start-to-end simulations, a novel LPWFA (hybrid LWFA-PWFA) scheme for driving soft X-ray free-electron lasers (Soft-XFELs) with high-gain performance and sufficient robustness. Non-ideal electron beams generated from the LWFA stage are directly employed to drive the PWFA stage. A self-optimizing mechanism operating within the PWFA blowout regime is revealed, which enables the generation of high-quality witness electron beams with a charge of 32.82 pC, and global and slice-averaged energy spreads as low as 0.42% and 0.15%, respectively. These high-quality electron beams in turn drive a soft X-ray FEL, producing pulses with an energy of 27.22 μJ and a peak power of approximately 5.69 GW at 10 nm. Importantly, the proposed scheme exhibits strong robustness against practical drive laser fluctuations, including laser energy jitter ranging from -2% to 2% and focal position jitter from -0.40 mm to 0.40 mm, robustly delivering soft X-ray pulses with energies exceeding 5 μJ and 2.52×10¹¹ photons per shot. This work represents a significant advance in the development of compact soft X-ray FELs, ensuring stable operation and paving the way toward a reliable and widely accessible source. Laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerator; beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator; soft X-ray free-electron lasers; Robustness Chen Xizhuan Feng Ke Jiang Hai Guo Zixiao Wang Guiyao Ge Yanjie Hu Runshu Luan Shixia Wang Hao Li Song Wang Wentao Li Ruxin RESTRICTED dataset Science Data Bank