HIGH-GRADIENT, HIGH-TRANSFORMER-RATIO, DIELECTRIC WAKE FIELD ACCELERATOR

The Phase I work reported here responds to DoE'ss stated need "...to develop improved accelerator designs that can provide very high gradient (>200 MV/m for electrons...) acceleration of intense bunches of particles." Omega-P'™s approach to this goal is through use of a ramped train of annular electron bunches to drive a coaxial dielectric wakefield accelerator (CDWA) structure. This approach is a direct extension of the CDWA concept from acceleration in wake fields caused by a single drive bunch, to the more efficient acceleration that we predict can be realized from a tailored (or ramped) train of several drive bunches. This is possible because of a much higher transformer ratio for the latter. The CDWA structure itself has a number of unique features, including: a high accelerating gradient G, potentially with G > 1 GeV/m; continuous energy coupling from drive to test bunches without transfer structures; inherent transverse focusing forces for particles in the accelerated bunch; highly stable motion of high charge annular drive bunches; acceptable alignment tolerances for a multi-section system. What is new in the present approach is that the coaxial dielectric structure is now to be energized by-not one-”but by a short train of ramped annular-shaped drive bunches moving in the outer coaxial channel of the structure. We have shown that this allows acceleration of an electron bunch traveling along the axis in the inner channel with a markedly higher transformer ratio T than for a single drive bunch. As described in this report, the structure will be a GHz-scale prototype with cm-scale transverse dimensions that is expected to confirm principles that can be applied to the design of a future THz-scale high gradient (> 500 MV/m) accelerator with mm-scale transverse dimensions. We show here a new means to significantly increase the transformer ratio T of the device, and thereby to significantly improve its suitability as a flexible and effective component in a future high energy, high gradient accelerator facility. We predict that the T of a high gradient CDWA can be increased by a substantial factor; this enhancement is dramatically greater than what has been demonstrated heretofore. This large enhancement in T that we predict arises from using a train of three or four drive bunches in which the spacing of the bunches and their respective charges are selected according to a simple principle that requires each bunch lose energy to the wakefields at the same rate, so as not to sacrifice drive beam efficiency—as would be the case if one bunch exhausted its available energy while others had not. It is anticipated that results from the study proposed here can have a direct impact on design of the dielectric accelerator in a TeV-scale collider concept, and in the accelerator for an x-ray FEL