Abstract

Plasmas available for plasma wakefield accelerator experiments may have longitudinal and transverse density profiles that could affect the outcome of an experiment. This paper investigates the effect of plasmas with finite radius and inhomogeneous transverse density profiles on the wakefield excitation and the self-modulation instability (SMI) development in overdense plasmas. We focus here on the case of an electron bunch. Simulation results show that such plasmas generate larger focusing force for the propagating electron beam and therefore higher growth rate for the SMI. Although the initial accelerating field (Ez) amplitude is lower in such plasmas, the increased focusing force can dominate the development trend of the SMI, i.e., larger saturated Ez amplitude can be reached over similar plasma lengths.

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