Coupling of laser- generated electrons with conventional accelerator devices

Electron beams produced by laser- plasma interaction are arousing a strong interest in the conventional accelerator community due to their high initial energy and strong beam current. Us- ing adequate beam shaping it could be possible to make their characteristics comparable or even bet- ter to those obtained in traditional accelerator facil- ities based on RF technology. Moreover, the advan- tages of using laser-plasma electron beams can be ex- pressed in terms of size and cost of the global accel- erating infrastructure. Several studies to use laser- generated electrons as injector, e.g. for a compact FEL, have been made. However, improvements are still necessary since, currently, the laser-accelerated beams are not sufficiently controllable to make them suitable as a replacement for conventional accelera- tors. The aim of this work is to report on the progress of the study related to coupling laser-accelerated electrons to conventional accelerator devices such as quadrupoles and solenoids. We have focused our study on laser-generated electrons obtained nowa- days by conventional multi hundred TW laser sys- tems. We have analyzed different lattice structures to improve the beam transport. Results and issues that have been identified are shown and discussed.