No Arabic abstract
A dynamic mitigation is presented for sausage and kink instability growths of a z-current driven magnetized plasma column. We have proposed a dynamic mitigation method based on a phase control to smooth plasma non-uniformities and to mitigate the instability growth in perturbed plasma systems. In this paper we found that a wobbling motion of the z-current electron axis induces a phase-controlled perturbation, so that the growths of the sausage and kink instabilities are successfully mitigated. In general, plasma instabilities emerge from perturbations, and the perturbation phase is normally unknown. However, if the perturbation phase is known or actively imposed by, for example, a designed driver wobbling behavior, the instability growth would be controlled and mitigated by a superimposition of the perturbations imposed. The results in this paper demonstrate that the wobbling z-current electron beam would provide an improvement in the plasma column stability and uniformity.
A long, relativistic charged particle beam propagating in a plasma is subject to the self-modulation instability. This instability is analyzed and the growth rate is calculated, including the phase relation. The phase velocity of the accelerating field is shown to be significantly less than the drive beam velocity. These results indicate that the energy gain of a plasma accelerator driven by a self-modulated beam will be severely limited by dephasing. In the long-beam, strongly-coupled regime, dephasing is reached in less than four e-foldings, independent of beam-plasma parameters.
In the past decades, beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) experiments have seen remarkable progress by using high-energy particle beams such as electron, positron and proton beams to drive wakes in neutral gas or pre-ionized plasma. This review highlights a few recent experiments in the world to compare experiment parameters and results.
It is demonstrated that the performance of the self-modulated proton driver plasma wakefield accelerator (SM-PDPWA) is strongly affected by the reduced phase velocity of the plasma wave. Using analytical theory and particle-in-cell simulations, we show that the reduction is largest during the linear stage of self-modulation. As the instability nonlinearly saturates, the phase velocity approaches that of the driver. The deleterious effects of the wakes dynamics on the maximum energy gain of accelerated electrons can be avoided using side-injections of electrons, or by controlling the wakes phase velocity by smooth plasma density gradients.
In this work, we present the results of two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of a hohlraum target whose outgoing radiation is used to produce a homogeneously ionized carbon plasma for ion-beam stopping measurements. The cylindrical hohlraum with gold walls is heated by a frequency-doubled ($lambda_l = 526.5$ $mu m$) $1.4$ $ns$ long laser pulse with the total energy of $E_l = 180$ $J$. At the laser spot, the peak matter and radiation temperatures of, respectively, $T approx 380$ $eV$ and $T_r approx 120$ $eV$ are observed. X-rays from the hohlraum heat the attached carbon foam with a mean density of $rho_C = 2$ $mg/cm^3$ to a temperature of $T approx 25$ $eV$. The simulation shows that the carbon ionization degree ($Z approx 3.75$) and its column density stay relatively stable (within variations of about $pm7%$) long enough to conduct the ion-stopping measurements. Also, it is found that a special attention should be paid to the shock wave, emerging from the X-ray heated copper support plate, which at later times may significantly distort the carbon column density traversed by the fast ions.
Metre-scale plasma wakefield accelerators have imparted energy gain approaching 10 gigaelectronvolts to single nano-Coulomb electron bunches. To reach useful average currents, however, the enormous energy density that the driver deposits into the wake must be removed efficiently between shots. Yet mechanisms by which wakes dissipate their energy into surrounding plasma remain poorly understood. Here, we report ps-time-resolved, grazing-angle optical shadowgraphic measurements and large-scale particle-in-cell simulations of ion channels emerging from broken wakes that electron bunches from the SLAC linac generate in tenuous lithium plasma. Measurements show the channel boundary expands radially at 1 million metres-per-second for over a nanosecond. Simulations show that ions and electrons that the original wake propels outward, carrying 90 percent of its energy, drive this expansion by impact-ionizing surrounding neutral lithium. The results provide a basis for understanding global thermodynamics of multi-GeV plasma accelerators, which underlie their viability for applications demanding high average beam current.