Wakefield decay in a radially bounded plasma due to formation of electron halo

Abstract

There is a new effect that can limit the lifetime of a weakly nonlinear wakefield in a radially bounded plasma. If the drive beam is narrow, some of the plasma electrons fall out of the collective motion and leave the plasma radially, forming a negatively charged halo around it. These electrons repeatedly return to the plasma under the action of the charge separation field, interact with the plasma wave and cause its damping. The lowest-energy halo electrons take the energy from the wave more efficiently, because their trajectories are bent by the plasma wave towards the regions of the strongest acceleration. For correct accounting of the wave damping in simulations, it is necessary and sufficient to take the simulation window twice as wide as the plasma.

7 pages, 11 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (5)

• Ion motion in the wake driven by long particle bunches in plasmas
• Proton Bunch Self-Modulation in Plasma with Density Gradient
• Experimental Study of Wakefields Driven by a Self-Modulating Proton Bunch in Plasma
• Propagation of ultra-short, resonant, ionizing laser pulses in rubidium vapor
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Ion dynamics driven by a strongly nonlinear plasma wake