Effects of Plasma Temperature in the Blowout Regime for Plasma Accelerators

Abstract

Research on plasma accelerators for high-energy colliders has rapidly progressed over the past few decades. Plasma acceleration with a high repetition rate will enable higher collider luminosity, but results in a heated plasma. This study investigates two phenomena—beam breakup instability and ion motion—in the nonlinear blowout regime in plasma accelerators and how the plasma temperature affects them. It was found that increasing the plasma temperature enhances the beam breakup instability by reducing the blowout radius while suppressing the on-axis ion-density spike caused by ion motion. This imposes a stringent demand on alignment tolerances, but it offers promising prospects for mitigating ion motion.