Flat bubble regime and laminar plasma flow in a plasma wake field accelerator

TL;DR

This paper presents a 2D model of bubble formation in plasma wakefield accelerators, revealing conditions for laminar and turbulent plasma flows and their effects on the wakefield, especially in flat driver scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 2D model distinguishing laminar and turbulent plasma flows within the bubble, highlighting the robustness of laminar flow to symmetry breaking.

Findings

Laminar flow is robust to symmetry breaking.

Transverse wake field is absent in laminar flow with non-relativistic electrons.

The model differentiates bubble structures based on plasma flow types.

Abstract

A simple 2D model of the bubble formation in a plasma wakefield accelerator is developed and investigated. It is shown that in the case of a flat driver the bubble may consist of two parts that correspond to two different types of the plasma flow: a laminar flow where plasma electron streams do not cross and a two-stream (turbulent) flow. The laminar flow turns out to be robust to the symmetry breaking. Building-of of the developed model we demonstrate that in the case of the laminar flow and non-relativistic plasma electrons the transverse wake field is absent inside the bubble even in the case of a transversely nonuniform plasma.