Focusing of Drive and Test Bunches in a Dielectric Waveguide Filled with Inhomogeneous Plasma

TL;DR

This study uses numerical PIC simulations to analyze how inhomogeneous plasma-filled dielectric waveguides can optimize the focusing and acceleration of electron bunches, revealing a trade-off between focusing strength and acceleration efficiency.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a vacuum channel in inhomogeneous plasma enhances electron bunch focusing, identifying an optimal vacuum size for maximum focusing.

Findings

Vacuum channel improves bunch focusing.

Optimal vacuum size maximizes focusing.

Full plasma filling yields best acceleration but poor focusing.

Abstract

The paper presents the results of numerical PIC-simulation of accelerated and drive bunches dynamics in a dielectric waveguide filled with radially inhomogeneous plasma. The wakefield was excited by the electron bunch in a quartz (permittivity 3.75) dielectric tube with outer and inner diameters of 1.2 mm and 1.0 mm, respectively, which was nested into a cylindrical metallic waveguide. The drive bunch characteristics were chosen to be: 5 GeV for electron energy, 3 nC for the charge, 0.2 mm - the bunch length, 0.9 mm - the bunch diameter. The accelerated bunch had the same parameters, except for the charge, which was equal to 0.3 nC. The interior of the waveguide was filled with plasma having different transverse density profiles, viz., the density profile formed in the capillary discharge, and the radially nonuniform density profile with the vacuum channel along the waveguide axis. For all the cases under study the plasma density was low, so that the plasma frequency was lower than the fundamental dielectric mode frequency. The obtained PIC-simulation data have shown that the vacuum channel in the inhomogeneous plasma cylinder improves the accelerated bunch focusing. There is the optimum vacuum-channel size value, at which the focusing turns out to be the strongest. The improvement in the accelerated bunch focusing is accompanied by the decrease in the accelerating gradient as compared with the full plasma filling of the drift channel. The best acceleration takes place in the absence of plasma; however in that case the test bunch focusing does not occur.