Coherent-synchrotron-radiation-free longitudinal shaping of a high-charge electron bunch based on velocity modulation

Abstract

Beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) is a promising technique to generate high-energy electron bunches for future electron-positron colliders. Longitudinal shaping of high-charge drive beam is highly desired for achieving high-transformer ratio and loading high-charge witness beam. However, the existing shaping schemes either focused on relatively low-charge bunch shaping or accompanied with significant charge-loss rate (typically over 50%). In this paper, a coherent-synchrotron-radiation-free shaping scheme based on velocity modulation is proposed to generate a high-charge beam with a linearly ramped profile. A >10  kA-peak-current shaped beam containing >50  nC charge with a low charge-loss rate is demonstrated by a start-to-end simulation, and the tunabilities of the beam charge and the peak current, and the robustness of the proposed shaping scheme are also discussed. When loaded by a 3 nC witness beam, a >GV/m accelerating electric field with a transformer ratio larger than 4 can be achieved in a uniform plasma for the shaped drive beam, providing the possibility of high-transformer-ratio PWFA for a high-charge beam. Published by the American Physical Society 2024