Using Flat Beams In Plasma Accelerators For Future Particle Colliders

Future linear particle colliders typically propose using high-quality flat beams to achieve the desired collision rate while avoiding beam degradation effects at the interaction point. For the first time, researchers from the BELLA Center in the Berkeley Lab ATAP Division , in collaboration with colleagues at DESY and CERN , have analyzed the acceleration of flat particle beams in plasma-based accelerators. Their work identified a plasma-based source of emittance mixing and potential mitigation strategies.

Plasma-based accelerators are promising candidate technologies for future linear colliders due to their ultra-high accelerating fields. These fields can be orders of magnitude larger than conventional metallic-cavity, radio frequency-based accelerators, resulting in a compact accelerator footprint.

To maximize a collider’s discovery potential, the collision rate must increase while minimizing harmful radiation effects during the collision, known as beamstrahlung. A proposed solution to achieve the necessary collider performance is to operate with flat beams at the collision point, utilizing a large beam aspect ratio in both horizontal and vertical directions. Operating the collider with flat beams requires maintaining these beams’ horizontal and vertical emittance during acceleration.

This work explores how the coupling of wakefields in plasma accelerators results in beam emittance mixing between the horizontal and vertical planes and how, in some instances, the characteristics of the plasma wakefield accelerator can be selected to alleviate this effect.

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