Multi-proton bunch driven hollow plasma wakefield acceleration in the nonlinear regime

Abstract

Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration has been demonstrated in simulations to be capable of accelerating particles to the energy frontier in a single stage, but its potential is hindered by the fact that currently available proton bunches are orders of magnitude longer than the plasma wavelength. Fortunately, proton micro-bunching allows driving plasma waves resonantly. In this paper, we propose using a hollow plasma channel for multiple proton bunch driven plasma wakefield acceleration and demonstrate that it enables the operation in the nonlinear regime and resonant excitation of strong plasma waves. This new regime also involves beneficial features of hollow channels for the accelerated beam (such as emittance preservation and a uniform accelerating field) and long buckets of stable deceleration for the drive beam. The regime is attained at a proper ratio between plasma skin depth, driver radius, hollow channel radius, and micro-bunch period.