No Arabic abstract
Plasma-based accelerators (PBAs), having demonstrated the production of GeV electron beams in only centimetre scales, offer a path towards a new generation of highly compact and cost-effective particle accelerators. However, achieving the required beam quality, particularly on the energy spread for applications such as free-electron lasers, remains a challenge. Here we investigate fundamental sources of energy spread and bunch length in PBAs which arise from the betatron motion of beam electrons. We present an analytical theory, validated against particle-in-cell simulations, which accurately describes these phenomena. Significant impact on the beam quality is predicted for certain configurations, explaining previously observed limitations on the achievable bunch length and energy spread. Guidelines for mitigating these contributions towards high-quality beams are deduced.
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.
The plasma wakefield accelerator may accelerate particles to high energy in a future linear collider with unprecedented acceleration gradients, exceeding the GeV/m range. Beams for this application would have extremely high brightness and, subject to the intense plasma ion-derived focusing, they would achieve densities high enough to induce the plasma ions to collapse into the beam volume. This non-uniform ion density gives rise to strong nonlinear focusing which may lead to deleterious beam emittance growth. The effects of ion collapse and their mitigation has been investigated recently through particle-in-cell simulations, which show that by dynamically matching the beam to the focusing of the collapsed ion distribution, one may avoid serious emittance growth. We extend this work by exploring the near-equilibrium state of the beam-ion system reached after the ions have collapsed, a condition yielding the emittance growth mitigation observed. We show through PIC simulations and analytical theory that in this case a dual electron beam-ion Bennett-type equilibrium distribution is approached. Here, the beam and ion distributions share nearly the same shape, which generates nonlinear transverse electromagnetic fields. We exploit a Bennett-type model to study beam phase space dynamics and emittance growth over time scales much longer than permitted by PIC simulations through use of a 2D symplectic tracking code with Monte Carlo scattering based on Molieres theory of small angle multiple scattering. We find that while phase space diffusion due to parametric excitations of the beam size due to plasma non-uniformity is negligible, scattering from collapsed ions gives rise to manageable emittance growth in the case of a linear collider. The implications of these results on experiments planned at FACET-II are examined.
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.
Crab crossing scheme is an essential collision scheme to achieve high luminosity for the future colliders with large crossing angles. However, when bunch length of one or both colliding beams is comparable with the wavelength of the crab cavity voltage, the nonlinear dependence of the crabbing kick may present a challenge to the beam dynamics of the colliding beams and impact the beam quality as well as the luminosity lifetime. In this paper, the results of nonlinear dynamics in the crab crossing scheme are presented, using both analytical and numerical studies. The result indicates that higher-order synchro-betatron resonances may be excited in the crab crossing scheme with large crossing angle, which causes the beam quality deterioration and luminosity degradation. The studies also reveal possible countermeasures to suppress the synchro-beta resonance, hence mitigate the degradation of beam quality and luminosity.
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) outperform current radiofrequency technology in acceleration strength by orders of magnitude. Yet, enabling them to deliver competitive beam quality for demanding applications, particularly in terms of energy spread and stability, remains a major challenge. In this Letter, we propose to combine bunch decompression and active plasma dechirping for drastically improving the energy profile and stability of beams from LPAs. Start-to-end simulations demonstrate the efficacy of such post-acceleration phase-space manipulations and the potential to reduce current state-of-the-art energy spread and jitter from $1%$ to $0.10%$ and $0.024%$, respectively, closing the beam-quality gap to conventional acceleration schemes.