High quality electron beam generation in a proton-driven hollow plasma wakefield accelerator

Simulations of proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerators have demonstrated substantially higher accelerating gradients compared to conventional accelerators and the viability of accelerating electrons to the energy frontier in a single plasma stage. However, due to the strong intrinsic transverse fields varying both radially and in time, the witness beam quality is still far from suitable for practical application in future colliders. Here we demonstrate efficient acceleration of electrons in proton-driven wakefields in a hollow plasma channel. In this regime, the witness bunch is positioned in the region with a strong accelerating field, free from plasma electrons and ions. We show that the electron beam carrying the charge of about 10% of 1 TeV proton driver charge can be accelerated to 0.6 TeV with preserved normalized emittance in a single channel of 700 m. This high quality and high charge beam may pave the way for the development of future plasma-based energy frontier colliders.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Analytical and Numerical Characterization of Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation as a Longitudinal Electron Bunch Profile Monitor for AWAKE Run 2

In this paper, CST simulations of the coherent Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation with a range of parameters for different dielectric target materials and geometries are discussed and compared with the theoretical investigation of the Polarization Current Approach to design a prototype of a radiator for the bunch length/profile monitor for AWAKE Run 2. It was found that the result of PCA theory and CST simulation are consistent with each other regarding the shape of the emitted ChDR cone

iMPACT, undulator-based multi-bunch plasma accelerator

The accelerating gradient measured in laser or electron driven wakefield accelerators can be in the range of 10-100GV/m, which is 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than can be achieved by conventional RF-based particle accelerators. However, the beam quality preservation is still an important problem to be tackled to ensure the practicality of this technology. In this global picture, the main goals of this study are planning and coordinating a physics program, the so-called iMPACT, that addresses issues such as emittance growth mechanisms in the transverse and longitudinal planes through scattering from the plasma particles, minimisation of the energy spread and maximising the energy gain while benchmarking the milestones. In this paper, a summary and planning of the project is introduced and initial multi-bunch simulations were presented

The electron accelerator for the AWAKE experiment at CERN

The AWAKE collaboration prepares a proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment using the SPS beam at CERN. A long proton bunch extracted from the SPS interacts with a high power laser and a 10 m long rubidium vapour plasma cell to create strong wakefields allowing sustained electron acceleration. The electron bunch to probe these wakefields is supplied by a 20 MeV electron accelerator. The electron accelerator consists of an RF-gun and a short booster structure. This electron source should provide beams with intensities between 0.1 and 1 nC, bunch lengths between 0.3 and 3 ps and an emittance of the order of 2 mm mrad. The wide range of parameters should cope with the uncertainties and future prospects of the planned experiments. The layout of the electron accelerator, its instrumentation and beam dynamics simulations are presented

TeV/m catapult acceleration of electrons in graphene layers (vol 13, 1330, 2023)

The original version of this Article contained an error in the legend of Figure 1. “Overview of the catapult electron acceleration scheme in graphene layers. Moving from left to right, as indicated by the blue arrows, a single 3 fs-long laser pulse of 100 nm wavelength and 1021 W/cm2 peak intensity, ionizes a 1.5 μm-long (y) and 1.2 μm-thick (x) stack of graphene layers. The interaction results in self-injected electrons being accelerated to ≃ 7 MeV. The image is at scale, with a 150 nm bar drawn, and for better visibility, only 15 out of 60 graphene layers are shown. The simulated normalized transverse electric field (Ex) is shown as a surface colour plot for the same laser pulse before entering the target (left) and after leaving the target (right). This work contains 2D PIC simulations carried out in the yx-plane indicated in the image.” now reads: “Overview of the catapult electron acceleration scheme in graphene layers. Moving from left to right, as indicated by the blue arrows, a single 3 fs-long laser pulse of 100 nm wavelength and 1021 W/cm2 peak intensity, ionizes a 1.5 μm-long (y) and 1.2 μm-thick (x) stack of graphene layers. The interaction results in self-injected electrons being accelerated to ≃ 7 MeV. The image is at scale, and for better visibility, only 15 out of 60 graphene layers are shown. The simulated normalized transverse electric field (Ex) is shown as a surface colour plot for the same laser pulse before entering the target (left) and after leaving the target (right). This work contains 2D PIC simulations carried out in the yx-plane indicated in the image.” The original Article has been corrected

A numerical approach to designing a versatile pepper-pot mask for emittance measurement

The pepper-pot method is a popular emittance measurement technique for high intensity beams at low energy such as those generated by photo-injectors. In this paper, the beam dynamics in the space charge dominated regime and analytical design criteria for a mask-based emittance measurement (pepper-pot method) are revisited. A tracking code developed to test the performance of a pepper-pot setup is introduced. Examples of such testing are presented with particle distributions that were generated using PARMELA under different focusing conditions. These distributions were numerically tested against a series of mask geometries suggested by analytical criteria. The resulting fine-tuned geometries and beam dynamics features observed are presented

S-band booster design and emittance preservation for the Awake e−e^- injector

AWAKE is a proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment at CERN which uses the protons from the SPS. It aims to study the self modulation instability of a proton bunch and the acceleration of an externally injected electron beam in the plasma wakefields, during the so called Phase II until the technical stop of LHC and its injector chain (LS2) in 2019. The external electron beam of 0.1 to 1nC charge per bunch will be generated using an S-band photo injector with a high QE semiconducting cathode. A booster linac was designed to allow variable electron energy for the plasma experiments from 16 to 20 MeV. For an RF gun and booster system, emittance control can be highlighted as a challenging transmission task. Once the beam emittance is compensated at the gun exit and the beam is delivered to the booster with an optimum beam envelope, fringing fields and imperfections in the linac become critical for preserving the injection emittance. This paper summarises the rf design studies in order to preserve the initial beam emittance at the entrance of the linac and alternative mitigation schemes in case of emittance growth

Witness Beam Production with an RF Gun and a Travelling Wave Booster Linac for AWAKE Experiment at CERN

AWAKE is a unique experiment that aims to demonstrate the proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration. In this experiment, proton bunches from the SPS accelerator will be injected into a 10m long pre-formed plasma section to form wakefields of hundreds MV/m to several GV/m. A second beam, e.g., the witness beam, will be injected after the protons in an appropriate phase to gain energy from the wakefields. A photo-injector will be utilised to deliver this second beam. It consists of an S-band RF gun followed by a meter long accelerating travelling wave structure (ATS). The RF gun was recuperated from existing PHIN photo-injector. A 3D RF design of the ATS was done by using the CST code and the field maps produced were used to characterise the electron beam dynamics under space charge effect by using the PARMELA code. The impact of the mechanical errors on the beam dynamics were investigated

Review of Emittance Diagnostics for Space Charge Dominated Beams for AWAKE e⁻ Injector

For a low energy, high intensity beam, total beam emittance is dominated by defocusing space charge force. This is most commonly observed in photo-injectors. In this low energy regime, emittance measurement techniques such as quadrupole scans fail as they consider the beam size only depends on optical functions. The pepper-pot method is used for 2D emittance measurements in a single shot manner. In order to measure the beam emittance in space charge dominated regime by quadrupole scans, space charge term should be carefully incorporated into the transfer matrices. On the other hand, methods such as divergence interferometry via optical transition radiation (OTRI), phase space tomography using 1D projections of quadrupole scans can be suitably applied for such conditions. In this paper, the design of a versatile pepper-pot system for AWAKE experiment at CERN is presented for a wide range of bunch charges from 0.1 to 1nC where the space charge force increases significantly. In addition, other aforementioned methods and respective algorithms are introduced as alternative methods