Abstract
From plasma-wakefield acceleration as a physics experiment toward a plasma-based accelerator as a user facility, the beam physics issues remaining to be solved are still numerous. Providing beams with high energy, charge, and quality simultaneously, not only within the plasma but also at the user doorstep itself, is the main concern. Despite its tremendous efficiency in particle acceleration, the wakefield displays a complex 3D profile which, associated to the beam-loading field induced by the accelerated beam itself, makes the acceleration of high charge to high energy often incompatible with high beam quality. Beam extraction from the plasma without quality degradation for a transfer either to the next plasma stage or to the user application is another difficulty to consider. This article presents the substantial studies carried out and the different innovative methods employed for tackling all these different issues. Efforts focused on achieving the challenging beam parameters targeted by the EuPRAXIA accelerator facility project. The lessons learned at the end of these in-depth simulations and optimizations are highlighted. The sensitivity to different error sources is also estimated to point out the critical components of such an accelerator. Finally, the needs in terms of laser and plasma parameters are provided.
Highlights
Laser or particle beams propagating in a plasma can drive an electric field several orders of magnitude more intense than that produced by radio-frequency cavities in conventional accelerators
One of the best ways to jump from the plasma-based acceleration as a physics experiment toward a plasmabased accelerator is to adopt a similar approach to the design of a conventional accelerator
Scheme 5 refers to particle-driven wakefield acceleration (PWFA), where until now only the final energy of 1 GeV has been studied, with the electron bunch externally injected from a 500 MeV rf injector
Summary
Laser or particle beams propagating in a plasma can drive an electric field several orders of magnitude more intense than that produced by radio-frequency (rf) cavities in conventional accelerators. Ingenious laser-plasma experiments have been set up, demonstrating first the possibility to accelerate electrons to hundreds of MeV [3,4,5], to the symbolic threshold of 1 GeV [6], and to 2 [7], 3 [8], 4 [9], and very recently 8 GeV [10] These experimental results are supported by simulations with 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) codes, which further explore the acceleration up to 10 GeV [11], hundreds of GeV [12], or even 1 TeV [13], assuming the achievement of a good enough electron injection. They should be capable of extracting the beam from a plasma stage and injecting it into the plasma stage or delivering it to the user application with minimum quality degradation Such a transfer line for a high charge with substantial beam loading remains to be demonstrated.
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