Physical Review Special Topics. Accelerators and Beams (Nov 2010)

Scaling of the longitudinal electric field and transformer ratio in a nonlinear plasma wakefield accelerator

  • I. Blumenfeld,
  • C. E. Clayton,
  • F. J. Decker,
  • M. J. Hogan,
  • C. Huang,
  • R. Ischebeck,
  • R. H. Iverson,
  • C. Joshi,
  • T. Katsouleas,
  • N. Kirby,
  • W. Lu,
  • K. A. Marsh,
  • W. B. Mori,
  • P. Muggli,
  • E. Oz,
  • R. H. Siemann,
  • D. R. Walz,
  • M. Zhou

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.13.111301
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 11
p. 111301

Abstract

Read online Read online

The scaling of the two important figures of merit, the transformer ratio T and the longitudinal electric field E_{z}, with the peak drive-bunch current I_{p}, in a nonlinear plasma wakefield accelerator is presented for the first time. The longitudinal field scales as I_{P}^{0.623±0.007}, in good agreement with nonlinear wakefield theory (∼I_{P}^{0.5}), while the unloaded transformer ratio is shown to be greater than unity and scales weakly with the bunch current. The effect of bunch head erosion on both parameters is also discussed.