Recent Experiment on Wakefield Transformer Ratio Enhancement at AWA

Abstract

One technique to enhance the transformer ratio beyond the ordinary limit of 2 in a collinear wakefield acceleration scheme is to use a ramped bunched train (RBT). The first experimental demonstration has been reported in [1]. However, due to the mismatch between the beam bunch length and frequency of the accelerating structure, the observed transformer ratio was only marginally above 2 in the earlier experiment. We recently revisited this experiment with an optimized bunch length using the laser stacking technique at Argonne Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) facility. A transformer ratio of 3.4 has been measured using two drive bunches. Attempting to use four drive bunches met with major challenges. In this article, measurement results and data analysis from these experiments are presented in detail.