Emittance preservation of an electron beam in a loaded quasi-linear plasma wakefield

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that with proper parameter choices and exploiting specific effects, high-charge electron beams can be efficiently accelerated in quasi-linear plasma wakefields while preserving emittance and maintaining a narrow energy spread.

Contribution

It introduces a method for emittance preservation in high-charge electron acceleration within quasi-linear plasma wakefields driven by proton beams.

Findings

Electron beams can gain significant energy with minimal emittance growth.

Properly chosen parameters enable narrow energy spread in accelerated beams.

Beam loading and plasma electron blowout are key effects for optimization.

Abstract

We investigate beam loading and emittance preservation for a high-charge electron beam being accelerated in quasi-linear plasma wakefields driven by a short proton beam. The structure of the studied wakefields are similar to those of a long, modulated proton beam, such as the AWAKE proton driver. We show that by properly choosing the electron beam parameters and exploiting two well known effects, beam loading of the wakefield and full blow out of plasma electrons by the accelerated beam, the electron beam can gain large amounts of energy with a narrow final energy spread (%-level) and without significant emittance growth.