Self-modulation instability of a long proton bunch in plasmas
Abstract
An analytical model for the self-modulation instability of a long relativistic proton bunch propagating in uniform plasmas is developed. The self-modulated proton bunch resonantly excites a large amplitude plasma wave (wake field), which can be used for acceleration of plasma electrons. Analytical expressions for the linear growth rate and the number of exponentiations are given. We use the full three-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations to study the beam self-modulation and the transition to the nonlinear stage. It is shown that the self-modulation of the proton bunch competes with the hosing instability which tends to destroy the plasma wave. A method is proposed and studied through PIC simulations to circumvent this problem which relies on the seeding of the self-modulation instability in the bunch.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1003.5816,
title = {Self-modulation instability of a long proton bunch in plasmas},
author = {Naveen Kumar and Alexander Pukhov and Konstantin Lotov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.5816},
year = {2015}
}