In this report we explore resonant multi-bunch, transverse wakefield effects in a linear accelerator in which the dipole modes of the accelerator structures have been detuned.
In this paper we revisit the calculation of the emittance dilution of charged particle bunches due to collimator wakefield effects in the paraxial approximation. We also compare analytical results with numerical simulations considering the example of a collimator structure installed in the Accelerator Test Facility 2 (ATF2) at KEK
The beam breakup instability of the drive bunch in the structure-based collinear wakefield accel- erator is considered and a stabilizing method is proposed. The method includes using the specially designed beam focusing channel, applying the energy chirp along the electron bunch, and keeping energy chirp constant during the drive bunch deceleration. A stability condition is derived that defines the limit on the accelerating field for the witness bunch.
Plasma-based accelerators have made remarkable progress over the last two decades. Their unique characteristics make them tools that can revolutionize fields of science and applications. AWAKE takes advantage of the availability of high-energy, relativistic proton bunches to drive large amplitude wakefields ($\sim$GV/m) in a single plasma over distances sufficient to produce hundreds of GeV to TeV electron bunches.
We measure the effects of transverse wakefields driven by a relativistic proton bunch in plasma with densities of $2.1\times10^{14}$ and \unit[$7.7\times10^{14}$]{electrons/cm$^3$}. We show that these wakefields periodically defocus the proton bunch itself, consistently with the development of the seeded self-modulation process. We show that the defocusing increases both along the bunch and along the plasma by using time resolved and time-integrated measurements of the proton bunch transverse distribution. We evaluate the transverse wakefield amplitudes and show that they exceed their seed val…
Collimator wakefields in the Beam Delivery System (BDS) of future linear colliders, such as the International Linear Collider (ILC) and the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), can be an important source of emittance growth and beam jitter amplification, consequently degrading the luminosity. Therefore, a better understanding of collimator wakefield effects is essential to optimise the collimation systems of future linear colliders in order to minimise wakefield effects. In the past, measurements of single-bunch collimator wakefields have been carried out at SLAC with the aim of benchmarking theory…
X-band accelerator for multi-bunches has been a new way to produce high luminosity and energy efficiency bunches. As the smaller size and multi-bunches, the wakefield is more severe in X-band accelerator, unless some means of strongly suppressing of the transverse wakefield is adopted in the design of the accelerating structure. To calculate the transverse wakefield of the structure, wakefield calculated through the double circuit model has been demonstrated and its application in the structure designed.
Recent simulation shows that a self-modulated high energy proton bunch can excite a large amplitude plasma wakefield and accelerate an externally injected electron bunch to the energy frontier in a single stage acceleration through a long plasma channel. Based on this scheme, future colliders, either an electron-positron linear collider (e+-e- collider) or an electron-hadron collider (e-p collider) can be conceived. In this paper, we discuss some key design issues for an e+-e- collider and a high energy e-p collider, based on the existing infrastructure of the CERN accelerator complex.
We have directly measured THz wakefields induced by a subpicosecond, intense relativistic electron bunch in a diamond loaded accelerating structure via the wakefield acceleration method. We present here the beam test results from the first diamond based structure. Diamond has been chosen for its high breakdown threshold and unique thermoconductive properties. Fields produced by a leading (drive) beam were used to accelerate a trailing (witness) electron bunch which followed the drive bunch at a variable distance. The energy gain of a witness bunch as a function of its separation from the drive…
Beam-driven collinear wakefield accelerators (CWAs) that operate by using slow-wave structures or plasmas hold great promise toward reducing the size of contemporary accelerators. Sustainable acceleration of charged particles to high energies in the CWA relies on using field-generating relativistic electron bunches with a highly asymmetric peak current profile and a large energy chirp. A new approach to obtaining such bunches has been proposed and illustrated with the accelerator design supported by particle tracking simulations. It has been shown that the required particle distribution in the…
Hollow channel plasma wakefield acceleration is a proposed method to provide high acceleration gradients for electrons and positrons alike: a key to future lepton colliders. However, beams which are misaligned from the channel axis induce strong transverse wakefields, deflecting beams and reducing the collider luminosity. This undesirable consequence sets a tight constraint on the alignment accuracy of the beam propagating through the channel. Direct measurements of beam misalignment-induced transverse wakefields are therefore essential for designing mitigation strategies. We present the first…
A train of short charged particle bunches can efficiently drive a strong plasma wakefield over a long propagation distance only if all bunches reside in focusing and decelerating phases of the wakefield. This is shown possible with equidistant bunch trains, but requires the bunch charge to increase along the train and the plasma frequency to be higher than the bunch repetition frequency.
Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration has been demonstrated in simulations to be capable of accelerating particles to the energy frontier in a single stage, but its potential is hindered by the fact that currently available proton bunches are orders of magnitude longer than the plasma wavelength. Fortunately, proton micro-bunching allows driving plasma waves resonantly. In this paper, we propose using a hollow plasma channel for multiple proton bunch driven plasma wakefield acceleration and demonstrate that it enables the operation in the nonlinear regime and resonant excitation of stron…
Possibility of increase of transformer ratio TR in the case of the profiled sequence of bunches at their injection in a two-beam electron-positron dielectric-resonator collider is considered. Unlike considered earlier the waveguide case, for which TR is equal to the doubled number of bunches of sequence which provide a contribution to the total wakefield, and which is limited by the effect of the group velocity, in a resonator this limitation is absent. For deri-vation in the case of resonator of TR, proportional to the number of bunches, as well as in the waveguide, the ratio of bunch charges…
In the past, calculation of wakefields generated by an electron bunch propagating in a plasma has been carried out in linear approximation, where the plasma perturbation can be assumed small and plasma equations of motion linearized. This approximation breaks down in the blowout regime where a high-density electron driver expels plasma electrons from its path and creates a cavity void of electrons in its wake. In this paper, we develop a technique that allows to calculate short-range longitudinal and transverse wakes generated by a witness bunch being accelerated inside the cavity. Our results…
One approach to future high energy particle accelerators is based on the wakefield principle: a leading high-charge drive bunch is used to excite fields in an accelerating structure or plasma that in turn accelerates a trailing low-charge witness bunch. The transformer ratio R is defined as the ratio of the maximum energy gain of the witness bunch to the maximum energy loss of the drive bunch. In general, for configurations in which the two beams traverse the accelerator along the same trajectory (collinear wakefield acceleration). A number of techniques have been proposed to overcome the tran…
Beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerators typically use the external injection scheme to ensure controllable beam quality at injection. However, the externally injected witness bunch may exhibit a non-Gaussian transverse density distribution. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we show that the common beam quality factors, such as the normalized RMS emittance and beam radius, do not strongly depend on the initial transverse shapes of the witness beam. Nonetheless, a beam with a highly-peaked transverse spatial profile can achieve a higher fraction of the total beam charge in the core. The same…
We report preliminary studies of a three-channel, rectangular, high gradient dielectric wakefield accelerator element, which, unlike the collinear cylindrical dielectric wakefield device, does not suffer from low transformer ratio and may offer relief from the beam breakup instability. When configured as a resonator (DWR), it can be driven by a series of modest-charge drive bunches. This rectangular 'mode-locked' resonator consists of three channels lined with low-loss dielectric slabs: the central wider channel is the drive bunch channel, whereas two adjacent narrow channels are used to accel…
A linear theory of a wakefield excitation in a plasma-dielectric accelerating structure by a drive electron bunch in the case of an off-axis bunch injection has been constructed. The structure under investigation is a round dielectric-loaded metal waveguide with a channel for the charged particles, filled with homogeneous cold plasma. Derived theory was used to investigate numerically the spatial distribution of the bunch-excited wakefield components, which act on both the drive and witness bunches.
Plasma wakefield acceleration, either laser driven or electron-bunch driven, has been demonstrated to hold great potential. However, it is not obvious how to scale these approaches to bring particles up to the TeV regime. In this paper, we discuss the possibility of proton-bunch driven plasma wakefield acceleration, and show that high energy electron beams could potentially be produced in a single accelerating stage.
We study experimentally the longitudinal and transverse wakefields driven by a highly relativistic proton bunch during self-modulation in plasma. We show that the wakefields' growth and amplitude increase with increasing seed amplitude as well as with the proton bunch charge in the plasma. We study transverse wakefields using the maximum radius of the proton bunch distribution measured on a screen downstream from the plasma. We study longitudinal wakefields by externally injecting electrons and measuring their final energy. Measurements agree with trends predicted by theory and numerical simul…
In previous work [1] general expressions, valid for arbitrary bunch lengths, were derived for the wakefields of corrugated structures with flat geometry, such as is used in the RadiaBeam/LCLS dechirper. However, the bunch at the end of linac-based X-ray FELs--like the LCLS--is extremely short, and for short bunches the wakes can be considerably simplified. In this work, we first derive analytical approximations to the short-range wakes. These are generalized wakes, in the sense that their validity is not limited to a small neighborhood of the symmetry axis, but rather extends to arbitrary tran…
Effects of plasma inhomogeneity on self-modulating proton bunches and accelerated electrons were studied numerically. The main effect is the change of the wakefield wavelength which results in phase shifts and loss of accelerated particles. This effect imposes severe constraints on density uniformity in plasma wakefield accelerators driven by long particle bunches. The transverse two stream instability that transforms the long bunch into a train of micro-bunches is less sensitive to density inhomogeneity than are the accelerated particles. The bunch freely passes through increased density regi…
Temporally-modulated electron beams have a wide array of applications ranging from the generation of coherently-enhanced electromagnetic radiation to the resonant excitation of electromagnetic wakefields in advanced-accelerator concepts. Likewise producing low-energy ultrashort microbunches could be useful for ultra-fast electron diffraction and new accelerator-based light-source concepts. In this Letter we propose and experimentally demonstrate a passive microbunching technique capable of forming a picosecond bunch train at $\sim 6$~MeV. The method relies on the excitation of electromagnetic …
Terahertz frequency wakefields can be excited by ultra-short relativistic electron bunches travelling through dielectric lined waveguide (DLW) structures. These wakefields can either accelerate a witness bunch with high gradient, or modulate the energy of the driving bunch. In this paper, we study a passive dechirper based on the DLW to compensate the correlated energy spread of the bunches accelerated by the laser plasma wakefield accelerator (LWFA). A rectangular waveguide structure was employed taking advantage of its continuously tunable gap during operation. The assumed 200 MeV driving bu…
We consider spectrum-angular characteristics of the undulator-type radiation emitted by a bunch of relativistic charged particles because of interacting with the nonsynchronous spatial harmonics of the transverse wakefields excited by this bunch as it moves in a periodic structure. The conditions acceptable for possible experimental verification when incoherent undulator-type radiation power exceeds power loss associated with exciting the wakefields are discussed.
Nonlinear effects responsible for elongation of the plasma wave period are numerically studied with the emphasis on two-dimensionality of the wave. The limitation on the wakefield amplitude imposed by detuning of the wave and the driver is found.
A scheme of laser wakefield acceleration, when a relatively rare and long bunch of non-relativistic or weakly-relativistic electrons is initially in front of the laser pulse, is suggested and considered. The motion of test electrons is studied both in the one-dimensional case (1D wakefield) and in the three-dimensional laser wakefield excited in a plasma channel. It is shown that the bunch is trapped, effectively compressed both in longitudinal and transverse directions and accelerated to ultra-relativistic energies in the region of first accelerating maximum of the wakefield. The accelerated …
The plasma wakefield amplitudes which could be achieved via the modulation of a long proton bunch are investigated. We find that in the limit of long bunches compared to the plasma wavelength, the strength of the accelerating fields is directly proportional to the number of particles in the drive bunch and inversely proportional to the square of the transverse bunch size. The scaling laws were tested and verified in detailed simulations using parameters of existing proton accelerators, and large electric fields were achieved, reaching 1 GV/m for LHC bunches. Energy gains for test electrons bey…
We expand on the material that was published in the previous Proceedings of the CERN Accelerator School on Plasma Wakefield Acceleration. The material focused on Plasma Wakefield Acceleration in the short, narrow bunch regime. After a brief introduction, we describe Plasma Wakefield Acceleration driven by a bunch train. We then attempt to give simple and intuitive descriptions of bunch self-modulation, occurring when the bunch is long, and of current filamentation, occurring when the bunch is wide. Self-modulation is a means to use existing bunches carrying large amounts of energy to drive pla…
In the laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) a short intense laser pulse, with a duration of the order of a plasma wave period, excites an unusually strong plasma wake wave (laser wakefield). Recent experiments on laser wakefield acceleration [Nature (London) 431, p.535, p.538, p.541 (2004)] demonstrated generation of ultra-short (with a duration of a few femtoseconds) relativistic electron bunches with relatively low energy spread of the order of a few percent. We have studied the dynamics of such bunches in vacuum and in laser wakefield. The results show strong bunch dynamics already on a few m…
In the context of plasma wakefield acceleration beam driven, we exploit a high density charge trailing bunch whose self-fields act by mitigating the energy spread increase via beam loading compensation, together with bunch self-contain operated by the self-consistent transverse field. The work, that will be experimentally tested in the SPARC_LAB test facility, consists of a parametric scan that allows to find optimized parameters in order to preserve the high quality of the trailing bunch over the entire centimeters acceleration length, with a final energy spread increase of 0.1% and an emitta…
We report observation of a strong wakefield induced energy modulation in an energy-chirped electron bunch passing through a dielectric-lined waveguide. This modulation can be effectively converted into a spatial modulation forming micro-bunches with a periodicity of 0.5 - 1 picosecond, hence capable of driving coherent THz radiation. The experimental results agree well with theoretical predictions.
The spatio-temporal structure of the bulk wakefields excited by a relativistic electron bunch in plasma of semiconductors and semimetals is studied. It is shown that these wakefield consists of the field of longitudinal plasmons and Cherenkov electromagnetic radiation, which is a set of eigen electromagnetic waves of the semiconductor or semimetal waveguide. A branch of the surface plasmons appears in a waveguide with an axial vacuum channel. The process of wake excitation of the surface plasmons by the relativistic electron bunch is also investigated. The intensity of the excited wake surface…
We propose a Plasma Accelerator Research Station (PARS) based at proposed FEL test facility CLARA (Compact Linear Accelerator for Research and Applications) at Daresbury Laboratory. The idea is to use the relativistic electron beam from CLARA, to investigate some key issues in electron beam transport and in electron beam driven plasma wakefield acceleration, e.g. high gradient plasma wakefield excitation driven by a relativistic electron bunch, two bunch experiment for CLARA beam energy doubling, high transformer ratio, long bunch self-modulation and some other advanced beam dynamics issues. T…
For the purpose of laser wakefield acceleration, it turned out that also the injection of electron bunches longer than a plasma wavelength can generate accelerated femtosecond bunches with relatively low energy spread. This is of high interest because such injecting bunches can be provided, e.g., by state-of-the-art photo cathode RF guns. Here we point out that when an e-bunch is injected in the wakefield it is important to take into account the ponderomotive scattering of the injecting bunch by the laser pulse in the vacuum region located in front of the plasma. At low energies of the injecte…
We use beam position measurements over the first part of the AWAKE electron beamline, together with beamline modeling, to deduce the beam average momentum and to predict the beam position in the second part of the beamline. Results show that using only the first five beam position monitors leads to much larger differences between predicted and measured positions at the last two monitors than when using the first eight beam position monitors. These last two positions can in principle be used with ballistic calculations to predict the parameters of closest approach of the electron bunch with the…
We propose a method for numerical calculation of driving and detuning transverse beam coupling impedances of an asymmetric cavity. The method relies on eigenmode simulations and can be viewed as an alternative to time domain wakefield simulations. A similar procedure is well-established for symmetric cavities, and this paper extends it to the case of an asymmetric cavity. The method is benchmarked with time-domain wakefield simulations and its practical implementation is discussed.
A high-precision intra-bunch-train beam orbit feedback correction system has been developed and tested in the ATF2 beamline of the Accelerator Test Facility at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan. The system uses the vertical position of the bunch measured at two beam position monitors (BPMs) to calculate a pair of kicks which are applied to the next bunch using two upstream kickers, thereby correcting both the vertical position and trajectory angle. Using trains of two electron bunches separated in time by 187.6~ns, the system was optimised so as to stabilize the beam o…
Using 2d3v code LCODE, the numerical simulation of nonlinear wakefield excitation in plasma by shaped relativistic electron bunch with charge distribution, which increases according to Gaussian charge distribution up to the maximum value, and then decreases sharply to zero, has been performed. Transformer ratio, as the ratio of the maximum accelerating field to the maximum decelerating field inside the bunch, and accelerating the wakefield have been investigated taking into account nonlinearity of the wakefield. The dependence of the transformer ratio and the maximum accelerating field on the …
We briefly compare in numerical simulations the relativistic ionization front and electron bunch seeding of the self-modulation of a relativistic proton bunch in plasma. When parameters are such that initial wakefields are equal with the two seeding methods, the evolution of the maximum longitudinal wakefields along the plasma are similar. We also propose a possible seeding/injection scheme using a single plasma that we will study in upcoming simulations works.
Drive particle beams in linear or weakly nonlinear regimes of the plasma wakefield accelerator quickly reach a radial equilibrium with the wakefield, which is described in detail for the first time. The equilibrium beam state and self-consistent wakefields are obtained by combining analytical relationships, numerical integration, and first-principle simulations. In the equilibrium state, the beam density is strongly peaked near the axis, the beam radius is constant along the beam, and longitudinal variation of the focusing strength is balanced by varying beam emittance. The transverse momentum…
Due to their ultra-short duration and peak currents in the kA range, laser-wakefield accelerated electron bunches are promising drivers for ultrafast X-ray generation in compact free-electron-lasers (FELs), Thomson-scattering or betatron sources. Here we present the first single-shot, high-resolution measurements of the longitudinal bunch profile obtained without prior assumptions about the bunch shape. Our method allows complex features, such as multi-bunch structures, to be detected. Varying the length of the gas target, and thus the acceleration length, enables an assessment of the bunch pr…
Using a periodic electron beam bunch train to resonantly excite plasma wakefields in the quasi-nonlinear (QNL) regime has distinct advantages over employing a single, higher charge bunch. Resonant excitation in the QNL regime can produce plasma electron blowout using very low emittance beams with a small charge per pulse: the local density perturbation is extremely nonlinear, achieving total rarefaction, yet the resonant response of the plasma electrons at the plasma frequency is preserved. Such a pulse train, with inter-bunch spacing equal to the plasma period, can be produced via inverse fre…
In the Phase 2 of the AWAKE first experimental run (from May to November 2018), an electron beam was used to probe and test proton-driven wakefield acceleration in a rubidium plasma column. In this work, we analyze the overall charge capture and shot-to-shot reproducibility of the proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerator with various electron bunch injection parameters. The witness electron bunches were produced using an RF-gun equipped with a Cs2Te photocathode illuminated by a tailorable ultrafast deep ultraviolet (UV) laser pulse. The construction of the UV beam optical system enabled app…
By means of hollow plasma, multiple proton bunches work well in driving nonlinear plasma wakefields and accelerate electrons to energy frontier with preserved beam quality. However, the acceleration of positrons is different because the accelerating structure is strongly charge dependent. There is a discrepancy between keeping a small normalized emittance and a small energy spread. This results from the conflict that the plasma electrons used to provide focusing to the multiple proton bunches dilute the positron bunch. By loading an extra electron bunch to repel the plasma electrons and meanwh…
Recent simulations have shown that a high-energy proton bunch can excite strong plasma wakefields and accelerate a bunch of electrons to the energy frontier in a single stage of acceleration. It therefore paves the way towards a compact future collider design using the proton beams from existing high-energy proton machines, e.g. Tevatron or the LHC. This paper addresses some key issues in designing a compact electron-positron linear collider and an electron-proton collider based on existing CERN accelerator infrastructure.
An electron bunch passing through dielectric-lined waveguide generates $\check{C}$erenkov radiation that can result in high-peak axial electric field suitable for acceleration of a subsequent bunch. Axial field beyond Gigavolt-per-meter are attainable in structures with sub-mm sizes depending on the achievement of suitable electron bunch parameters. A promising configuration consists of using planar dielectric structure driven by flat electron bunches. In this paper we present a three-dimensional analysis of wakefields produced by flat beams in planar dielectric structures thereby extending th…
It is shown that the requirements for high quality electron bunch generation and trapping from an underdense photocathode in plasma wakefield accelerators can be substantially relaxed through localizing it on a plasma density downramp. This depresses the phase velocity of the accelerating electric field until the generated electrons are in phase, allowing for trapping in shallow trapping potentials. As a consequence the underdense photocathode technique is applicable by a much larger number of accelerator facilities. Furthermore, dark current generation is effectively suppressed.
We give formulas for the longitudinal, transverse, and quad point charge wakes for a short bunch of electrons passing by one plate of a flat dechirper.
The operation of a Free Electron Laser (FEL) in the ultraviolet or in the X-ray regime requires the acceleration of electron bunches with an rms length of 25 to 50 micro meters. The wakefields generated by these sub picosecond bunches extend into the frequency range well beyond the threshold for Cooper pair breakup (about 750 GHz) in superconducting niobium at 2 K. It is shown, that the superconducting cavities can indeed be operated with 25 micro meter bunches without suffering a breakdown of superconductivity (quench), however at the price of a reduced quality factor and an increased heat tr…