Beam Dynamics and Tolerance Studies of the THz-driven Electron Linac for the AXSIS Experiment

TL;DR

This paper investigates the beam dynamics and tolerance levels of a THz-driven dielectric-loaded electron linac for the AXSIS project, focusing on how fabrication and injection errors impact beam quality through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of how structural and injection errors affect beam acceleration and quality in the AXSIS THz-driven linac.

Findings

Fabrication errors influence beam dynamics and quality.

Injection errors can cause beam loss on the linac wall.

Simulation results inform tolerances for manufacturing and operation.

Abstract

A dielectric-loaded linac powered by THz-pulses is one of the key parts of the "Attosecond X-ray Science: Imaging and Spectroscopy" (AXSIS) project at DESY, Hamburg. As in conventional accelerators, the AXSIS linac is designed to have phase velocity equal to the speed of light which, in this case, is realized by tuning the thickness of the dielectric layer and the radius of the vacuum channel. Therefore, structure fabrication errors will lead to a change in the beam dynamics and beam quality. Additionally, errors in the bunch injection will also affect the acceleration process and can cause beam loss on the linac wall. This paper numerically investigates the process of electron beam acceleration in the AXSIS linac, taking into account the aforementioned errors. Particle tracking simulations were done using the code ECHO, which uses a low-dispersive algorithm for the field calculation and was specially adapted for the dielectric-loaded accelerating structures.