Head erosion with emittance growth in PWFA

Abstract

Head erosion is one of the limiting factors in plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA). We present a study of head erosion with emittance growth in field-ionized plasma from the PWFA experiments performed at the FACET user facility at SLAC. At FACET, a 20.3 GeV bunch with 1.8×1010 electrons is optimized in beam transverse size and combined with a high density lithium plasma for beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiments. A target foil is inserted upstream of the plasma source to increase the bunch emittance through multiple scattering. Its effect on beamplasma interaction is observed with an energy spectrometer after a vertical bend magnet. Results from the first experiments show that increasing the emittance has suppressed vapor field-ionization and plasma wakefields excitation. Plans for the future are presented. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.