The wakefields of a relativistic electron beam passing through a waveguide loaded with an active medium with weak resonant dispersion have been considered. For the calculations in this paper the parameters of the medium are those of a solution of fullerene (C60) in a nematic liquid crystal that exhibits activity in the X-band. It was shown that several of the TM accelerating modes can be amplified for the geometries under consideration; structures in which higher order modes are amplified exhibit essential advantages as PASERs. In particular, the amplification of the highest mode occurs in a structure loaded with a rather thick active medium layer that maximizes the energy stored by the active medium.
Dielectric loaded structures are promising candidates for use in the structure wakefield acceleration (SWFA) technique, for both the collinear wakefield and the two-beam acceleration (CWA and TBA respectively) approaches, due to their low fabrication cost, low rf losses, and the potential to withstand high gradient. A short pulse (<=20 ns) TBA program is under development at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) facility where dielectric loaded structures are being used for both the power extractor/transfer structure (PETS) and the accelerator. In this study, an X-band 11.7 GHz dielectric PE…
We investigate beam loading and emittance preservation for a high-charge electron beam being accelerated in quasi-linear plasma wakefields driven by a short proton beam. The structure of the studied wakefields are similar to those of a long, modulated proton beam, such as the AWAKE proton driver. We show that by properly choosing the electron beam parameters and exploiting two well known effects, beam loading of the wakefield and full blow out of plasma electrons by the accelerated beam, the electron beam can gain large amounts of energy with a narrow final energy spread (%-level) and without …
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.
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…
Matched beam loading in laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA), characterizing the state of flattening of the acceleration electric field along the bunch, leads to the minimization of energy spread at high bunch charges. Here, we demonstrate by independently controlling injected charge and acceleration gradients, using the self-truncated ionization injection scheme, that minimal energy spread coincides with a reduction of the normalized beam divergence. With the simultaneous confirmation of a constant beam radius at the plasma exit, deduced from betatron radiation spectroscopy, we attribute this …
Accelerating particles to high energies in plasma wakefields is considered to be a promising technique with good energy efficiency and high gradient. While important progress has been made in plasma-based electron acceleration, positron acceleration in plasma has been scarcely studied and a fully self-consistent and optimal scenario has not yet been identified. For high energy physics applications where an electron-positron collider would be desired, the ability to accelerate positrons in plasma wakefields is however paramount. Here we show that the preservation of beam quality can be compromi…
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.
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…
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.
An elegant and convenient rigorous approach for solving circular open-ended dielectric-loaded waveguide diffraction problems is presented. It uses the solution of corresponding Wiener-Hopf-Fock equation and leads to an infinite linear system for reflection coefficients (S-parameters) of the waveguide, the latter can be efficiently solved numerically using the reducing technique. As a specific example directly applicable to beam-driven radiation sources based on dielectric-lined capillaries, diffraction of a slow TM symmetrical mode at the open end of a circular waveguide with uniform dielectri…
We consider the calculation of electromagnetic fields generated by an electron bunch passing through a vacuum chamber structure that, in general, consists of an entry pipe, followed by some kind of transition or cavity, and ending in an exit pipe. We limit our study to structures having rectangular cross-section, where the height can vary as function of longitudinal coordinate but the width and side walls remain fixed. For such structures, we derive a Fourier representation of the wake potentials through one-dimensional functions. A new numerical approach for calculating the wakes in such stru…
Plasma wakefields can enable very high accelerating gradients for frontier high energy particle accelerators, in excess of 10 GeV/m. To overcome limits on total acceleration achievable, specially shaped drive beams can be used in both linear and nonlinear plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFA), to increase the transformer ratio, implying that the drive beam deceleration is minimized relative to acceleration obtained in the wake. In this Letter, we report the results of a nonlinear PWFA, high transformer ratio experiment using high-charge, longitudinally asymmetric drive beams in a plasma cell. A…
The development of compact accelerator facilities providing high-brightness beams is one of the most challenging tasks in field of next-generation compact and cost affordable particle accelerators, to be used in many fields for industrial, medical and research applications. The ability to shape the beam longitudinal phase-space, in particular, plays a key role to achieve high-peak brightness. Here we present a new approach that allows to tune the longitudinal phase-space of a high-brightness beam by means of a plasma wakefields. The electron beam passing through the plasma drives large wakefie…
High peak power, tunable, narrowband terahertz emitters are becoming sought after given their portability, efficiency, and ability to be deployed in the field for industrial, medical, and military applications. The use of accelerator systems producing THz frequencies via Cherenkov radiation, generated by passing an electron beam through a slow-wave wakefield structure, is a promising method to meet future THz requirements. To date, efforts have been dedicated to analysis and design of sources utilizing laser seeded bunched electron beam drivers with relativistic energies beyond 5 MeV. Presente…
Advanced acceleration methods based on wakefields generated by high energy electron bunches passing through dielectric-based structures have demonstrated $>$GV/m fields, paving the first steps on a path to applications such as future compact linear colliders. For a collider scenario, it is desirable that, in contrast to plasmas, wakefields in dielectrics do not behave differently for positron and electron bunches. In this Letter, we present measurements of large amplitude fields excited by positron bunches with collider-relevant parameters (energy 20 GeV, and $0.7 \times 10^{10}$ particles per…
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…
The RadiaBeam/SLAC dechirper, a structure consisting of pairs of flat, metallic, corrugated plates, %a corrugated structure in flat geometry, has been installed just upstream of the undulators in the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). As a dechirper, with the beam passing between the plates on axis, longitudinal wakefields are induced that can remove unwanted energy chirp in the beam. However, with the beam passing off axis, strong transverse wakes are also induced. This mode of operation has already been used for the production of intense, multi-color photon beams using the Fresh-Slice techn…
An electron beam passing through a tube which is lined on the inside with a dielectric layer will radiate energy in the THz range due to the interaction with the boundary. The resonant enhancement of certain frequencies is conditioned by structure parameters as tube radius and permittivity of the dielectric layer. In low loss structures narrow-band radiation is generated which can be coupled out by suitable antennas. For higher frequencies the coupling to the resistive outer metal layer becomes increasingly important. The losses in the outer layer prohibit to reach high frequencies with narrow…
Dielectric lined waveguides are under extensive study as accelerating structures that can be excited by electron beams. Rectangular dielectric structures are used both in proof of principle experiments for new accelerating schemes and for studying the electronic properties of the structure loading material. Analysis of Cherenkov radiation generated by high current relativistic electron bunch passing through a rectangular waveguide with transversal isotropic dielectric loading has been carried out. Some of the materials used for the waveguide loading of accelerating structures (sapphire, cerami…
The interaction of short relativistic charged particle bunches with waveguides and other accelerator system components is a critical issue for the development of X-ray FELs (free electron lasers) and linear collider projects. Wakefield Cherenkov losses of short bunches have been studied previously for resistive wall, disk-loaded, corrugated and dielectric loaded waveguides. It was noted in various publications [1] that if the slowdown layer is thin, the Cherenkov loss factor of a short bunch does not depend on the guiding system material and is a constant for any given transverse cross section…
New measurements of the stripping cross-section for ultrarelativistic hydrogen-like lead ions passing through aluminium and silicon have been performed at the Advanced Wakefield experiment at CERN. Agreement with existing measurements and theory has been obtained. Improvements in terms of electron beam quality and ion beam diagnostic capability, as well as further applications of such an electron beam, are discussed.
Dielectric disk accelerating (DDA) structures are being studied as an alternative to conventional disk-loaded copper structures. This paper investigates numerically an efficient X-band DDA structure operating at a higher order mode of TM02-π. This accelerating structure consists of dielectric disks with irises arranged periodically in a metallic enclosure. Through optimizations, the RF power loss on the metallic wall can be significantly reduced, resulting in an extremely high quality factor Q_0=111064 and a very high shunt impedance R_shunt=605 MΩ/m. The RF-to-beam power efficiency reaches 46…
A method for producing narrow-band THz radiation proposes passing an ultra-relativistic beam through a metallic pipe with small periodic corrugations. We present results of a measurement of such an arrangement at Brookhaven's Accelerator Test Facility (ATF). Our pipe was copper and was 5 cm long; the aperture was cylindrically symmetric, with a 1 mm (radius) bore and a corrugation depth (peak-to-peak) of 60 um. In the experiment we measured both the effect on the beam of the structure wakefield and the spectral properties of the radiation excited by the beam. We began by injecting a relatively…
Plasma wake-field acceleration experiments are performed at the SPARC LAB test facility by using a gas-filled capillary plasma source composed of a dielectric capillary. The electron can reach GeV energy in a few centimeters, with an accelerating gradient orders of magnitude larger than provided by conventional techniques. In this acceleration scheme, wake fields produced by passing electron beams through dielectric structures can determine a strong beam instability that represents an important hurdle towards the capability to focus high-current electron beams in the transverse plane. For thes…
A method for producing narrow-band THz radiation proposes passing an ultra-relativistic beam through a metallic pipe with small periodic corrugations. We present results of a measurement of such an arrangement at Brookhaven's Accelerator Test Facility (ATF). Our pipe was copper and was 5 cm long; the aperture was cylindrically symmetric, with a 1 mm (radius) bore and a corrugation depth (peak-to-peak) of 60 um. In the experiment we measured both the effect on the beam of the structure wakefield and the spectral properties of the radiation excited by the beam. We began by injecting a relatively…
An international team is currently investigating the best way to use Higher Order Modes (HOM) for beam diagnostics in 3.9 GHz cavities. HOMs are excited by charged particles when passing through an accelerating structure. Third harmonic cavities working at 3.9 GHz have been installed in FLASH to linearize the bunch energy profile. A proof-of-principle of using HOMs for beam monitoring has been made at FLASH in the TESLA 1.3 GHz cavities. Since the wakefields generated in the 3.9 GHz cavities are significantly larger, their impact on the beam should be carefully minimized. Therefore our target …
