A summary of the beatwave experiments at Ecole Polytechnique
Résumé
We present a summary of the beatwave particle acceleration program developed at Ecole Polytechnique. In dedicated experiments, plasma formation, plasma wave generation and saturation, and particle acceleration were successively studied and understood in detail. A maximum energy gain of 1.3 MeV was obtained, which is compatible with an accelerating gradient of 0.7 GV/m.