No Arabic abstract
The evolution of beam phase space in ionization-induced injection into plasma wakefields is studied using theory and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The injection process causes special longitudinal and transverse phase mixing leading initially to a rapid emittance growth followed by oscillation, decay, and eventual slow growth to saturation. An analytic theory for this evolution is presented that includes the effects of injection distance (time), acceleration distance, wakefield structure, and nonlinear space charge forces. Formulas for the emittance in the low and high space charge regimes are presented. The theory is verified through PIC simulations and a good agreement is obtained. This work shows how ultra-low emittance beams can be produced using ionization-induced injection.
Plasma injection schemes are crucial for producing high-quality electron beams in laser-plasma accelerators. This article introduces the general concepts of plasma injection. First, a Hamiltonian model for particle trapping and acceleration in plasma waves is introduced; ionization injection and colliding-pulse injection are described in the framework of this Hamiltonian model. We then proceed to consider injection in plasma density gradients.
The proposal of generating high quality electron bunches via ionization injection triggered by an counter propagating laser pulse inside a beam driven plasma wake is examined via two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is shown that electron bunches obtained using this technique can have extremely small slice energy spread, because each slice is mainly composed of electrons ionized at the same time. Another remarkable advantage is that the injection distance is changeable. A bunch with normalized emittance of 3.3 nm, slice energy spread of 15 keV and brightness of $7.2times 10^{18}$ A m$^{-2}$ rad$^{-2}$ is obtained with an optimal injection length which is achieved by adjusting the launch time of the drive beam or by changing the laser focal position. This makes the scheme a promising approach to generate high quality electron bunches for the fifth generation light source.
An active plasma lens focuses the beam in both the horizontal and vertical planes simultaneously using a magnetic field generated by a discharge current through the plasma. A beam size of 5--10 $mu$m can be achieved using an focusing gradient on the order of 100 T/m. The active plasma lens is therefore an attractive element for plasma wakefield acceleration, because an ultra-small size of the witness electron beam is required for injection into the plasma wakefield to minimize emittance growth and to enhance the capturing efficiency. When the driving beam and witness electron beam co-propagate through the active plasma lens, interactions between the driving and witness beams and the plasma must be considered. In this paper, through particle-in-cell simulations, we discuss the possibility of using an active plasma lens for the final focusing of the electron beam in the presence of driving proton bunches. The beam parameters for AWAKE Run 2 are taken as an example for this type of application. It is confirmed that the amplitude of the plasma wakefield excited by proton bunches remains the same even after propagation through the active plasma lens. The emittance of the witness electron beam increases rapidly in the plasma density ramp regions of the lens. Nevertheless, when the witness electron beam has a charge of 100 pC, emittance of 10 mm mrad, and bunch length of 60 $mu$m, its emittance growth is not significant along the active plasma lens. For small emittance, such as 2 mm mrad, the emittance growth is found to be strongly dependent on the plasma density.
Plasma-based accelerators have achieved tremendous progress in the past few decades, thanks to the advances of high power lasers and the availability of high-energy and relativistic particle beams. However, the electrons (or positrons) accelerated in the plasma wakefields are subject to radiation losses, which generally suppress the final energy gains of the beams. In this paper, radiation reaction in plasma-based high-energy accelerators is investigated using test particle approach. Energy-frontier TeV colliders based on a multiple stage laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerator and a single-staged proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerator are studied in detail. The results show that the higher axial and transverse field gradients seen by an off-axis injected witness beam result in a stronger damping force on the accelerated particles. Proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerated electrons are shown to lose less energy compared to those accelerated in a multi-staged laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerator.
The extreme electromagnetic fields sustained by plasma-based accelerators allow for energy gain rates above 100 GeV/m but are also an inherent source of correlated energy spread. This severely limits the usability of these devices. Here we propose a novel compact concept which compensates the induced energy correlation by combining plasma accelerating stages with a magnetic chicane. Particle-in-cell and tracking simulations of a particular 1.5 m-long setup with two plasma stages show that 5.5 GeV bunches with a final relative energy spread of $1.2times10^{-3}$ (total) and $5.5times10^{-4}$ (slice) could be achieved while preserving sub-micron emittance. This at least one order of magnitude below current state-of-the-art and paves the way towards applications such as Free-Electron Lasers.