2016/10/18 by M. Turner, Alexey Petrenko, Turner, Marlene +6
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Accelerator Physics (physics.acc-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1610.05527
openalex publication_date 2016/10/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The AWAKE experiment will use a \SI400GeV/c proton beam with a longitudinal bunch length of σz = 12 \rmcm to create and sustain GV/m plasma wakefields over 10 meters . A 12 cm long bunch can only drive strong wakefields in a plasma with npe = 7 × 1014 \rmelectrons/cm3 after the self-modulation instability (SMI) developed and microbunches formed, spaced at the plasma wavelength. The fields present during SMI focus and defocus the protons in the transverse plane \citeSMI. We show that by inserting two imaging screens downstream the plasma, we can measure the maximum defocusing angle of the defocused protons for plasma densities above npe = 5 × 1014 \rmelectrons/cm-3. Measuring maximum defocusing angles around 1 mrad indirectly proves that SMI developed successfully and that GV/m plasma wakefields were created. In this paper we present numerical studies on how and when the wakefields defocus protons in plasma, the expected measurement results of the two screen diagnostics and the physics we can deduce from it.