Determination of the Charge per Micro-Bunch of a Self-Modulated Proton Bunch using a Streak Camera

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to measure the charge per micro-bunch in a self-modulated proton bunch using streak camera images, aiding the understanding of wakefield acceleration in plasma.

Contribution

It introduces a novel procedure to recover the charge distribution along a modulated proton bunch from streak camera data.

Findings

Successfully measured charge per micro-bunch in the proton bunch.

Demonstrated the correlation between charge modulation and wakefield driving.

Enhanced understanding of the self-modulation process in plasma wakefield acceleration.

Abstract

The Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE) develops the first plasma wakefield accelerator with a high-energy proton bunch as driver. The 400GeV bunch from CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) propagates through a 10m long rubidium plasma, ionized by a 4TW laser pulse co-propagating with the proton bunch. The relativistic ionization front seeds a self-modulation process. The seeded self-modulation transforms the bunch into a train of micro-bunches resonantly driving wakefields. We measure the density modulation of the bunch, in time, with a streak camera with picosecond resolution. The observed effect corresponds to alternating focusing and defocusing fields. We present a procedure recovering the charge of the bunch from the experimental streak camera images containing the charge density. These studies are important to determine the charge per micro-bunch along the modulated proton bunch and to understand the wakefields driven by the modulated bunch.