Simulation of beam-induced plasma in gas-filled rf cavities

Abstract

Processes occurring in a radio-frequency (rf) cavity, filled with high pressure gas and interacting with proton beams, have been studied via advanced numerical simulations. Simulations support the experimental program on the hydrogen gas-filled rf cavity in the Mucool Test Area (MTA) at Fermilab, and broader research on the design of muon cooling devices. SPACE, a 3D electromagnetic particle-in-cell (EM-PIC) code with atomic physics support, was used in simulation studies. Plasma dynamics in the rf cavity, including the process of neutral gas ionization by proton beams, plasma loading of the rf cavity, and atomic processes in plasma such as electron-ion and ion-ion recombination and electron attachment to dopant molecules, have been studied. Through comparison with experiments in the MTA, simulations quantified several uncertain values of plasma properties such as effective recombination rates and the attachment time of electrons to dopant molecules. Simulations have achieved very good agreement with experiments on plasma loading and related processes. The experimentally validated code SPACE is capable of predictive simulations of muon cooling devices.

arXiv comment10 pp. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1709.05285

References in corpus (2)

• AP-Cloud: Adaptive Particle-in-Cloud Method for Optimal Solutions to Vlasov-Poisson Equation
• Pressurized rf cavities in ionizing beams

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Evolution of the self-injection process in the transition of an LWFA from self-modulation to blowout regime
• SPACE: 3D Parallel Solvers for Vlasov-Maxwell and Vlasov-Poisson Equations for Relativistic Plasmas with Atomic Transformations
• The Experimental Program for High Pressure Gas Filled Radio Frequency Cavities for Muon Cooling Channels
• Simulation of plasma loading of high-pressure RF cavities