The expressions for wake fields, generated in plasma (in the plasma waveguide or unlimited plasma) by relativistic electron bunch, was received and analyzed for the cases of the presence and absence of strong external longitudinal magnetic field. For the both cases the comparative analysis of the dependence of field amplitudes on the parameters of the electron bunch was done.
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.
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.
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…
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…
Earlier, the authors found a mechanism for the sequence of short relativistic electron bunches, which leads to resonant excitation of the wakefield, even if the repetition frequency of bunches differs from the plasma frequency. In this case, the synchronization of frequencies is restored due to defocusing of the bunches which get into the bad phases with respect to the plasma wave. However, in this case, the bunches are lost, which as a result of this do not participate in the excitation of the wakefield. In this paper, numerical simulation was used to study the dynamics of electron bunches an…
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…
A numerical investigation on the spatiotemporal evolution of an electron beam, externally injected in a plasma in the presence of a plasma wake field, is carried out. The latter is driven by an ultra-short relativistic axially-symmetric femtosecond electron bunch. We first derive a novel Poisson-like equation for the wake potential where the driving term is the ultra-short bunch density, taking suitably into account the interplay between the sharpness and high energy of the bunch. Then, we show that a channel is formed longitudinally, through the externally injected beam while experiencing the…
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…
A plasma flow behind a relativistic electron bunch propagating through a cold plasma is found assuming that the transverse and longitudinal dimensions of the bunch are small and the bunch can be treated as a point charge. In addition, the bunch charge is assumed small. A simplified system of equations for the plasma electrons is derived and it is shown that, through a simple rescaling of variables, the bunch charge can be eliminated from the equations. These equations have a unique solution, with an ion cavity formed behind the driver. The equations are solved numerically and the scaling of th…
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…
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…
A long, narrow, relativistic charged particle bunch propagating in plasma is subject to the self-modulation (SM) instability. We show that SM of a proton bunch can be seeded by the wakefields driven by a preceding electron bunch. SM timing reproducibility and control are at the level of a small fraction of the modulation period. With this seeding method, we independently control the amplitude of the seed wakefields with the charge of the electron bunch and the growth rate of SM with the charge of the proton bunch. Seeding leads to larger growth of the wakefields than in the instability case.
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.
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 …
Particle acceleration in a quasilinear plasma wake provides access to high acceleration gradients while avoiding self-trapping of the background electrons. However, the plasma response to the externally injected witness bunch leads to a variation of the focussing fields along the bunch length, which can lead to a emittance growth. In order to investigate the impact of this emittance growth on the overall beam quality, we develop a single figure of merit based on a potential high-energy application for the AWAKE experiment at CERN. We show that the development of such a figure of merit naturall…
The AWAKE experiment relies on the self-modulation instability of a long proton bunch to effectively drive wakefields and accelerate an electron bunch to GeV-level energies. During the first experimental run (2016-2018) the instability was made phase reproducible by means of a seeding process: a short laser pulse co-propagates within the proton bunch in a rubidium vapor. Thus, the fast creation of plasma and the onset of beam-plasma interaction within the bunch drives seed wakefields. However, this seeding method leaves the front of the bunch not modulated. The bunch front could self-modulate …
The paper presents the results of numerical PIC-simulation of positron bunch focusing when acceleration in a plasma dielectric wakefield accelerator. The wakefield was excited by drive electron bunch in quartz dielectric tube, embedded in cylindrical metal waveguide. The internal area of dielectric tube has been filled with radially homogeneous plasma having in general case the vacuum channel along waveguide axis. Results of numerical PIC simulation have shown that it is possible a simultaneous acceleration and focusing of test positron bunch in the wakefield. The dependence of transport and a…
Dynamics of self-injected electron bunches has been numerically simulated in blowout regime at self-consistent change of electron bunch acceleration by plasma wakefield, excited by a laser pulse, to additional their acceleration by wakefield, excited by self-injected bunch. Advantages of acceleration by pulse train and bunch self-cleaning have been considered.
Transverse mode coupling instability of a single bunch caused by oscillating wake field is considered in the paper. The instability threshold is found at different frequencies of the wake with space charge tune shift taken into account. The wake phase advance in the bunch length from 0 up to $4π$ is investigated. It is shown that the space charge can push the instability threshold up or down dependent on the phase advance. Transition region is investigated thoroughly, and simple asymptotic formulas for the threshold are represented.
Seeded self-modulation in a plasma can transform a long proton beam into a train of micro-bunches that can excite a strong wakefield over long distances, but this needs the plasma to have a certain density profile with a short-scale ramp up. For the parameters of the AWAKE experiment at CERN, we numerically study which density profiles are optimal if the self-modulation is seeded by a short electron bunch. With the optimal profiles, it is possible to "freeze" the wakefield at approximately half the wavebreaking level. High-energy electron bunches (160 MeV) are less efficient seeds than low-ene…
We propose a new method for self-injection of high-quality electron bunches in the plasma wakefield structure in the blowout regime utilizing a "flying focus" produced by a drive beam with an energy chirp. In a flying focus the speed of the density centroid of the drive bunch can be superluminal or subluminal by utilizing the chromatic dependence of the focusing optics. We first derive the focal velocity and the characteristic length of the focal spot in terms of the focal length and an energy chirp. We then demonstrate using multidimensional particle-in-cell simulations that a wake driven by …
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.
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…
In AWAKE a self-modulated proton bunch drives wakefields in a plasma. Recent experiments successfully demonstrated many aspects of the self-modulation of the drive bunch as well as acceleration of test electrons. Next experiments will focus on producing a multi-GeV accelerated electron bunch with low emittance and low energy spread. The experiment requires a variety of advanced beam diagnostics to characterize the self-modulated proton bunch at the picosecond time scale. These include optical transition radiation and a streak camera for short and long time scale detailed imaging of self-modula…
Seeded Self-modulation (SSM) has been demonstrated to transform a long proton bunch into many equidistant micro-bunches (e.g., the AWAKE case), which then resonantly excite strong wakefields. However, the wakefields in a uniform plasma suffer from a quick amplitude drop after reaching the peak. This is caused by a significant decrease of the wake phase velocity during self-modulation. A large number of protons slip out of focusing and decelerating regions and get lost, and thus cannot contribute to the wakefield growth. Previously suggested solutions incorporate a sharp or a linear plasma long…
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…
When a resistive feedback and single-bunch wake act together, it is known that some head-tail modes may become unstable even without space charge. This feedback-wake instability, FWI, modified by space charge to a certain degree, is shown to have a special single-maximum increasing- dropping pattern with respect to the gain. Also, at sufficiently large Coulomb and wake fields, as well as the feedback gain, a new type of transverse mode-coupling instability is shown to take place, 3FMCI, when head-to-tail amplified positive modes couple and the growth rate saturates with the gain.
Due to the highly nonlinear nature of the beam-loading, it is at present not possible to analytically determine the beam parameters needed in a two-bunch plasma wakefield accelerator for maintaining a low energy spread. Therefore in this paper, by using the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno algorithm for the parameter scanning with the code QuickPIC and the polynomial regression together with k-fold cross-validation method, we obtain two fitting formulas for calculating the parameters of tri-Gaussian electron beams when minimizing the energy spread based on the beam-loading effect in a nonlinea…
The process of wake fields excitation by a relativistic electron bunch in ion dielectric media is considered. The space-time structure of the excited wakefield in an ion dielectric waveguide is investigated. It is shown that the wake field in the infrared (terahertz) ranges consists of the field of longitudinal polaritons and Cherenkov radiation, which is a set of electromagnetic eigen waves (transverse polaritons) of a dielectric waveguide. A branch of surface polaritons appears in a dielectric waveguide with an axial vacuum channel. The process of wakefield excitation of surface polaritons b…
The possibility of charged particle acceleration by a longitudinal wake field excited in plasma by an electron bunch and a train of electron bunches. The exact solution of the stationary nonlinear self-consistent interaction of a monoenergetic relativistic bunch with cold plasma is obtained. It is shown that under certain conditions a self-acceleration of the bunch tail electrons up to high energies is possible.
The present numerical investigation of a Plasma Wakefield Acceleration scenario in the weakly non linear regime with external injection is motivated by the upcoming campaigns at the SPARC\_LAB test facility where the final goal is to demonstrate modest gradient acceleration ($\sim$1 GV/m) with no quality loss. The accelerated bunch can be envisioned to seed a free electron laser. The numerical study has been conducted with the particle-in-cell code ${\tt ALaDyn}$, an exhaustive description of the plasma-acceleration version is provided. The configuration consider a two bunches setup with param…
