Speaker
Description
Plasma wakefield acceleration is a promising technology for compact particle acceleration, experimental results demonstrating a high-quality beam reaching 1GeV energy in just 3.3cm [1]. Simulations are a key tool used to develop our understanding of plasma wakefield technologies, however, conventional particle-in-cell (PIC) codes can be arduous to run, requiring significant computing power.
Wake-T is a lightweight alternative to other PIC codes, boasting the ability to run these simulations in just minutes on a laptop, by considering simplified models for the plasma wakefields rather than computing full PIC plasma simulations [2]. This study assesses the use of Wake-T for simulating beam-driven plasma wakefields, with a focus on long drive-beams. The results are benchmarked against existing results [3, 4, 5] done using the spectral, quasi-cylindrical code FBPIC, which computes the full PIC simulation for the background plasma [6]. We also assess the functionality of Wake-T to perform sweeping parameter scans that would otherwise be prohibitively computationally expensive, to further analyse relationships between initial beam-plasma parameters and the development and evolution of the plasma wakefields and the particle beam.
In this work, we leverage Wake-T simulations to investigate the effect of the initial beam properties (i.e. size and emittance), and the effect of background plasma density and profile on the mutual evolution of the plasma wakefields and particle beam. Consideration is also given to long-drive beams with beam lengths in the millimetre range and much longer than the plasma wavelength, such as those commonly sourced from thermionic RF or DC guns.
[1] W. P. Leemans, et al., Nature Physics 2, 696–699 (2006).
[2] A. Ferran Pousa, R. Assmann, A. Martinez de la Ossa, Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1350, 012056 (2019).
[3] O. Jakobsson, et al., Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 61, 124002 (2019).
[4] M. Gross, et al., Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 740, 74 (2014).
[5] K. Moon, J. Jeong, C. Sung, M. Chung, Journal of the Korean Physical Society 83, 614 (2023).
[6] R. Lehe, M. Kirchen, I. A. Andriyash, B. B. Godfrey, J.-L. Vay, Computer Physics Communications 203, 66 (2016).
