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We present an experimental and simulation-based investigation of the temporal evolution of light emission from a thin, laser-ionized helium plasma source. We demonstrate an analytic model to calculate the approximate scaling of the time-integrated, on-axis light emission with the initial plasma density and temperature, supported by the experiment, which enhances the understanding of plasma light measurement for plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) plasma sources. Our model simulates the plasma density and temperature using a split-step Fourier code and a particle-in-cell code. A fluid simulation is then used to model the plasma and neutral density, and the electron temperature as a function of time and position. We then show the numerical results of the space-and-time-resolved light emission and that collisional excitation is the dominant source of light emission. We validate our model by measuring the light emitted by a laser-ionized plasma using a novel statistical method capable of resolving the nanosecond-scale temporal dynamics of the plasma light using a cost-effective camera with microsecond-scale timing jitter. This method is ideal for deployment in the high radiation environment of a particle accelerator that precludes the use of expensive nanosecond-gated cameras. Our results show that our models can effectively simulate the dynamics of a thin, laser-ionized plasma source. In addition, this work provides a detailed understanding of the plasma light measurement, which is one of the few diagnostic signals available for the direct measurement of PWFA plasma sources. 

We simulate the possibility of scaling channel formation to low density plasmas of low atomic number gas over a large range of pulse duration including (1) pulses up to 300 ps in duration, using inverse bremsstrahlung (IB) heating and (2) ultrashort pulses up to 100s of femtoseconds for generating tenuous plasmas of centimeter to meter lengths by optical field ionization (OFI). Results show IB heating up to tens of eV, and channels formed from an initial density of 1e18 cm-􀀀3 with axial densities as low as 1e17cm-3 and radius of 50 microns. It has been shown that centimeter-scale waveguides can be generated via OFI heating at densities of approximately 1e17 cm-􀀀3. Lastly, we outline the experimental setup to be used in future experiments at the University of Texas Tabletop Terawatt (UT3) facility.