English

Proton beam self-modulation seeded by electron bunch in plasma with density ramp

Plasma Physics 2020-12-02 v1 Accelerator Physics

Abstract

Seeded self-modulation in a plasma can transform a long proton beam into a train of micro-bunches that can excite a strong wakefield over long distances, but this needs the plasma to have a certain density profile with a short-scale ramp up. For the parameters of the AWAKE experiment at CERN, we numerically study which density profiles are optimal if the self-modulation is seeded by a short electron bunch. With the optimal profiles, it is possible to "freeze" the wakefield at approximately half the wavebreaking level. High-energy electron bunches (160 MeV) are less efficient seeds than low-energy ones (18 MeV), because the wakefield of the former lasts longer than necessary for efficient seeding.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.07713,
  title  = {Proton beam self-modulation seeded by electron bunch in plasma with density ramp},
  author = {K. V. Lotov and V. A. Minakov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.07713},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, 15 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:08:26.063Z