Anisotropy-driven collective instability in intense charged particle beams

Abstract

The classical electrostatic Harris instability is generalized to the case of a one-component intense charged particle beam with anisotropic temperature including the important effects of finite transverse geometry and beam space charge. For a long, coasting beam, the eigenmode code bEASt have been used to determine detailed 3D stability properties over a wide range of temperature anisotropy and beam intensity. A simple theoretical model is developed which describes the essential features of the linear stage of the instability. Both the simulations and the analytical theory clearly show that moderately intense beams are linearly unstable to short-wavelength perturbations provided the ratio of the longitudinal temperature to the transverse temperature is smaller than some threshold value. The delta-f particle-in-cell code BEST has been used to study the detailed nonlinear evolution and saturation of the instability.