Demonstration of a positron beam-driven hollow channel plasma wakefield accelerator

Plasma wakefield accelerators have been used to accelerate electron and positron particle beams with gradients that are orders of magnitude larger than those achieved in conventional accelerators. In addition to being accelerated by the plasma wakefield, the beam particles also experience strong tra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2016-06, Vol.7 (1), p.11785-11785, Article 11785
Main Authors: Gessner, Spencer, Adli, Erik, Allen, James M., An, Weiming, Clarke, Christine I., Clayton, Chris E., Corde, Sebastien, Delahaye, J. P., Frederico, Joel, Green, Selina Z., Hast, Carsten, Hogan, Mark J., Joshi, Chan, Lindstrøm, Carl A., Lipkowitz, Nate, Litos, Michael, Lu, Wei, Marsh, Kenneth A., Mori, Warren B., O’Shea, Brendan, Vafaei-Najafabadi, Navid, Walz, Dieter, Yakimenko, Vitaly, Yocky, Gerald
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/766/1960
639/766/1960/1137
639/766/419
639/766/483/3924
Humanities and Social Sciences
Lasers
Lithium
multidisciplinary
PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
Physics
Plasma
Plasma Physics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:Plasma wakefield accelerators have been used to accelerate electron and positron particle beams with gradients that are orders of magnitude larger than those achieved in conventional accelerators. In addition to being accelerated by the plasma wakefield, the beam particles also experience strong transverse forces that may disrupt the beam quality. Hollow plasma channels have been proposed as a technique for generating accelerating fields without transverse forces. Here we demonstrate a method for creating an extended hollow plasma channel and measure the wakefields created by an ultrarelativistic positron beam as it propagates through the channel. The plasma channel is created by directing a high-intensity laser pulse with a spatially modulated profile into lithium vapour, which results in an annular region of ionization. A peak decelerating field of 230 MeV m −1 is inferred from changes in the beam energy spectrum, in good agreement with theory and particle-in-cell simulations. Plasma wakefield accelerators produce gradients that are orders of magnitude larger than in conventional particle accelerator, but beams tend to be disrupted by transverse forces. Here the authors create an extended hollow plasma channel, which accelerates positrons without generating transverse forces.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms11785