Numerical and experimental studies of particle acceleration powered by modulated intense relativistic electron beams

Abstract

A fully electromagnetic particle code is used to simulate the transfer of energy from an annular modulated intense relativistic electron beam to a secondary low-current electron beam via a disk-loaded structure. It is shown that the modulated intense beam can be used to drive such an accelerator at a high transformer ratio (R approximately=10) with an accelerating gradient in the approximately 100-MV/m range. Power in excess of 1 GW was transferred from the primary to the secondary beam. An experiment was performed in which such a beam (diameter 13 cm, peak power 8 GW) dumped RF power into a disk-loaded structure of 1-m length. This RF power was transferred from the structure to a secondary electron beam, resulting in acceleration of electrons to an energy much greater than 10 MeV with current of the order of 300 A. >