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Title: Strategies for mitigating the ionization-induced beam head erosion problem in an electron-beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator

Journal Article · · Physical Review Special Topics. Accelerators and Beams
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [4];  [5]
  1. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  2. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China); Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of Oslo (Norway); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  4. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  5. Max Planck Inst. for Physics, Munich (Germany)
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Strategies for mitigating ionization-induced beam head erosion in an electron-beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) are explored when the plasma and the wake are both formed by the transverse electric field of the beam itself. Beam head erosion can occur in a preformed plasma because of a lack of focusing force from the wake at the rising edge (head) of the beam due to the finite inertia of the electrons. When the plasma is produced by field ionization from the space charge field of the beam, the head erosion is significantly exacerbated due to the gradual recession (in the beam frame) of the 100% ionization contour. Beam particles in front of the ionization front cannot be focused (guided) causing them to expand as in vacuum. When they expand, the location of the ionization front recedes such that even more beam particles are completely unguided. Eventually this process terminates the wake formation prematurely, i.e., well before the beam is depleted of its energy. Ionization-induced head erosion can be mitigated by controlling the beam parameters (emittance, charge, and energy) and/or the plasma conditions. In this paper we explore how the latter can be optimized so as to extend the beam propagation distance and thereby increase the energy gain. In particular we show that, by using a combination of the alkali atoms of the lowest practical ionization potential (Cs) for plasma formation and a precursor laser pulse to generate a narrow plasma filament in front of the beam, the head erosion rate can be dramatically reduced. Simulation results show that in the upcoming “two-bunch PWFA experiments” on the FACET facility at SLAC national accelerator laboratory the energy gain of the trailing beam can be up to 10 times larger for the given parameters when employing these techniques. Comparison of the effect of beam head erosion in preformed and ionization produced plasmas is also presented.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-92ER40727; SC0007970; SC0008316; SC0008491
OSTI ID:
1565220
Journal Information:
Physical Review Special Topics. Accelerators and Beams, Vol. 16, Issue 10; ISSN 1098-4402
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 15 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (11)

Nonlinear Theory for Relativistic Plasma Wakefields in the Blowout Regime journal April 2006
High energy density plasma science with an ultrarelativistic electron beam journal May 2002
Energy doubling of 42 GeV electrons in a metre-scale plasma wakefield accelerator journal February 2007
Beam Loading in the Nonlinear Regime of Plasma-Based Acceleration journal September 2008
Particle-in-cell simulations of tunneling ionization effects in plasma-based accelerators journal May 2003
QUICKPIC: A highly efficient particle-in-cell code for modeling wakefield acceleration in plasmas journal September 2006
Photo-ionized lithium source for plasma accelerator applications journal June 1999
Plasma wakefield acceleration experiments at FACET journal May 2010
Acceleration and focusing of electrons in two-dimensional nonlinear plasma wake fields journal November 1991
Plasma production via field ionization journal October 2006
An improved iteration loop for the three dimensional quasi-static particle-in-cell algorithm: QuickPIC journal October 2013

Cited By (5)

Wakefield-induced ionization injection in beam-driven plasma accelerators journal September 2015
Jitter mitigation in low density discharge plasma cells for wakefield accelerators journal February 2019
Longitudinal phase space dynamics of witness bunch during the Trojan Horse injection for plasma-based particle accelerators journal July 2019
Plasma-based accelerators: then and now journal August 2019
Jitter Mitigation in Low Density Discharge Plasma Cells for Wakefield Accelerators text January 2019

Figures / Tables (10)

FIG. 1(p. 5)figure FIG. 1
FIG. 2(p. 6)figure FIG. 2
FIG. 3(p. 7)figure FIG. 3
FIG. 4(p. 7)figure FIG. 4
FIG. 5(p. 7)figure FIG. 5
FIG. 6(p. 8)figure FIG. 6
FIG. 7(p. 8)figure FIG. 7
FIG. 8(p. 9)figure FIG. 8
FIG. 9(p. 9)figure FIG. 9
FIG. 10(p. 10)figure FIG. 10

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