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At least 109 records · Page 6

Simulation and experimental study of proton bunch self-modulation in plasma with linear density gradients

We present numerical simulations and experimental results of the self-modulation of a long proton bunch in a plasma with linear density gradients along the beam path. Simulation results agree with the experimental results reported [F. Braunmller, T. Nechaeva et al. (AWAKE Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 264801 (2020)]: with negative gradients, the charge of the modulated bunch is lower than with positive gradients. In addition, the bunch modulation frequency varies with gradient. Simulation results show that dephasing of the wakefields with respect to the relativistic protons along the plasma is the main cause for the loss of charge. The study of the modulation frequency reveals details about the evolution of the self-modulation process along the plasma. In particular for negative gradients, the modulation frequency across time-resolved images of the bunch indicates the position along the plasma where protons leave the wakefields. Simulations and experimental results are in excellent agreement.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Proton Bunch Self-Modulation in Plasma with Density Gradient

We study experimentally the effect of linear plasma density gradients on the self-modulation of a 400 GeV proton bunch. Results show that a positive or negative gradient increases or decreases the number of microbunches and the relative charge per microbunch observed after 10 m of plasma. The measured modulation frequency also increases or decreases. With the largest positive gradient we observe two frequencies in the modulation power spectrum. Results are consistent with changes in wakefields’ phase velocity due to plasma density gradients adding to the slow wakefields’ phase velocity during self-modulation growth predicted by linear theory.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

An Evolutionary Algorithm Approach to Multi-Pass ERL Optics Design

An Energy Recovery Experiment at CEBAF (ER@CEBAF) is aimed at demonstrating high energy, low current, multi-pass energy recovery at the existing 12 GeV CEBAF accelerator. The beam break-up instability, limiting the maximum beam current, can be controlled through minimizing beta functions for the lowest energy pass, which gives a preference to strongly focusing optics, e.g. a semi-periodic FODO lattice. On the other hand, one needs to limit beta function excursions, caused by under focusing, at the higher energy passes, which in turn favors weakly focusing linac optics. Balancing both effects is the main objective of proposed multi-pass linac optics optimization. Here, we discuss an optics design process for ER@CEBAF transverse optics using a genetic algorithm.

Neththikumara, I.↗

Recent Beam Stability Analysis for the EIC

This document summarizes work done in WBS 6.02.02 during FY23. Additional details can be found in the EIC overview paper presented at IPAC’23 [1], and the references therein. Progress has been made in the ESR and HSR lattice design, dynamic aperture optimization, and the RCS lattice design. The impedance and Collective effects are progressing and include the impedance optimization process of the vacuum systems for RCS, HSR, and ESR; collective effects studies; collective effects and beam-beam interaction; coupled bunch instabilities and the crab cavities; low-level RF feedback system design and beam-ion instability. The reversed phasing RF system has been numerically studied for the ESR to mitigate Robinson instability and demonstrate reliable stable beam operation. Various codes, including C++, SPACE [2], ELEGANT [3], and Mbtrack2 [4] have been employed to benchmark the results. The simulation of HSR bunch splitting with beam loading has been performed at 275 GeV energy. The evaluation of Beam Position Monitors aimed to validate their expected performance, with the primary objective being to verify their accuracy. Calculations of Electron Polarization in the ESR, RCS, and HSR are showing good progress. In the RCS, preliminary studies indicate excellent polarization transmission over intrinsic spin resonances, achieving over 90% transmission with improved performance compared to the previous lattice. Preliminary simulations in the ESR indicate encouraging results in minimizing depolarization and improving equilibrium polarization.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Stopping-power enhancement from discrete particle-wake correlations in high-energy-density plasmas

Three-dimensional (3D) simulations of electron beams propagating in high-energy-density plasmas using the quasistatic Particle-in-Cell (PIC) code QuickPIC demonstrate a significant increase in stopping power when beam electrons mutually interact via their wakes. Each beam electron excites a plasma wave wake of wavelength ~ 2 π c / ω p e , where c is the speed of light and ω p e is the background plasma frequency. Here we show that a discrete collection of electrons undergoes a beam-plasma-like instability caused by mutual particle-wake interactions that causes electrons to bunch in the beam, even for beam densities n b for which fluid theory breaks down. This bunching enhances the beam's stopping power, which we call “correlated stopping,” and the effect increases with the “correlation number” N b ≡ n b ( c / ω p e ) 3 . For example, a beam of monoenergetic 9.7 MeV electrons with N b = 1 / 8 , in a cold background plasma with n e = 10 26 cm – 3 (450 g cm – 3 DT), has a stopping power of 2.28 ± 0.04 times the single-electron value, which increases to 1220 ± 5 for N b = 64 . The beam also experiences transverse filamentation, which eventually limits the stopping enhancement.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Brief Overview of the ASD Integrated Test Stand, Activities and Hazards

The ITS venue provides the first opportunity to fully assemble and test the performance of the injector; integrate, assemble and test four modules; measure the severity of the Beam Break-Up instability and perform the first set of beam measurements. Figure 1 shows a high level configuration of the ITS without the system of overhead cable management trays. The final configuration will integrate the injector, 4 modules (12 accelerator cells), 264 SSPP Line Replaceable Units (LRUs), global controls, data acquisition, and a subset of the downstream transport, Table 1. This was chosen because it provides the minimum accelerator cells required to measure the Beam Break-Up (BBU) instability and perform measurements required to validate the ASD beam transport computer models, which are priority measurements for commissioning.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

First experimental report of nonlinear collimator in the SuperKEKB

SuperKEKB collimator system protects the superconducting final focusing magnets (QC1 and QC2) from quenching caused by beam halo particles. For effective shielding, the minimum aperture of vertical collimators is set smaller than the physical aperture of QC1. However, such collimators become dominant sources of beam coupling impedance, which can limit the maximum beam current due to impedance-driven instabilities. To address this issue, a nonlinear collimator (NLC) was introduced in February 2024. NLC is designed to reduce both beam backgrounds and collimator impedance, thereby suppressing beam instabilities caused by short-range wakefields. In this paper, we describe the results on impedance effects, beam background reduction, and beam lifetime when the nonlinear collimation system is turned on and off. These results validate the NLC concept and offer a promising approach for future high-luminosity colliders.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

A novel path to runaway electron mitigation via deuterium injection and current-driven MHD instability

Relativistic electron (RE) beams at high current density (low safety factor, qa) yet very low free-electron density accessed with D2 secondary injection in the DIII-D and JET tokamak are found to exhibit large-scale MHD instabilities that benignly terminate the RE beam. In JET, this technique has enabled termination of MA-level RE currents without measurable first-wall heating. This scenario thus offers an unexpected alternate pathway to achieve RE mitigation without collisional dissipation. Benign termination is explained by two synergistic effects. First, during the MHD-driven RE loss events both experiment and MHD orbit-loss modeling supports a significant increase in the wetted area of the RE loss. Second, as previously identified at JET and DIII-D, the fast kink loss timescale precludes RE beam regeneration and the resulting dangerous conversion of magnetic to RE kinetic energy. During the termination, the RE kinetic energy is lost to the wall, but the current fully transfers to the cold bulk thus enabling benign Ohmic dissipation of the magnetic energy on longer timescales via a conventional current quench. Hydrogenic (D2) secondary injection is found to be the only injected species that enables access to the benign termination. D2 injection: 1) facilitates access to low qa in existing devices (via reduced collisionality & resistivity), 2) minimizes the RE avalanche by ‘purging’ the high-Z atoms from the RE beam, 3) drives recombination of the background plasma, reducing the density and Alfven time, thus accelerating the MHD growth. Furthermore, this phenomenon is found to be accessible when crossing the low qa stability boundary with rising current, falling toroidal field, or contracting minor radius - the latter being the expected scenario for vertically unstable RE beams in ITER. While unexpected, this path scales favorably to fusion-grade tokamaks and offers a novel RE mitigation scenario in principle accessible with the day-one disruption mitigation system (DMS) of ITER.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Effect of overlapping laser beams and density scale length in laser-plasma instability experiments on OMEGA EP

Experiments have been conducted on the OMEGA EP laser facility to study the effect of density scale length and overlapping beam geometry on laser-plasma instabilities near and below the quarter-critical density. Experiments were conducted in both planar geometry (density scale length L n ~ 190 to 300 μm) and spherical geometry (L n ~ 150 μm) with up to four overlapping beams and were designed to have overlapped intensities and density scale lengths comparable to OMEGA spherical experiments, but with many fewer beams. In comparison with previous experiments on OMEGA and National Ignition Facility, it is confirmed that shorter density scale lengths favor the two-plasmon decay (TPD) instability, while longer density scale lengths favor stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). In addition, for experiments at the same scale length and overlapped laser intensity, higher single-beam intensities favor SRS, while a larger number of overlapping beams favor TPD.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Thermonuclear neutron emission from a sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch

We report the fusion Z-pinch experiment (FuZE) is a sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch designed to study the effects of flow stabilization on deuterium plasmas with densities and temperatures high enough to drive nuclear fusion reactions. Results from FuZE show high pinch currents and neutron emission durations thousands of times longer than instability growth times. While these results are consistent with thermonuclear neutron emission, energetically resolved neutron measurements are a stronger constraint on the origin of the fusion production. This stems from the strong anisotropy in energy created in beam-target fusion, compared to the relatively isotropic emission in thermonuclear fusion. In dense Z-pinch plasmas, a potential and undesirable cause of beam-target fusion reactions is the presence of fast-growing, “sausage” instabilities. This work introduces a new method for characterizing beam instabilities by recording individual neutron interactions in plastic scintillator detectors positioned at two different angles around the device chamber. Histograms of the pulse-integral spectra from the two locations are compared using detailed Monte Carlo simulations. These models infer the deuteron beam energy based on differences in the measured neutron spectra at the two angles, thereby discriminating beam-target from thermonuclear production. An analysis of neutron emission profiles from FuZE precludes the presence of deuteron beams with energies greater than 4.65 keV with a statistical uncertainty of 4.15 keV and a systematic uncertainty of 0.53 keV. This analysis demonstrates that axial, beam-target fusion reactions are not the dominant source of neutron emission from FuZE. These data are promising for scaling FuZE up to fusion reactor conditions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Maximizing the efficiency of plasma-based lepton accelerators

The next generation of particle accelerators will likely rely on compact accelerating structures to achieve very high gradients; one such candidate is accelerators using plasmas for the accelerating structures. Because of the small length scales of these structures, they can also be prone to the beam break-up instability, which would spoil the quality of the beam and leave it unsuitable for many applications. The goal of this project is to develop a framework for understanding the instabilities in plasma accelerators using language from conventional linear accelerator instabilities, such as wake fields and wake functions. During the course of this Phase I, we benchmarked a pseudo-spectral particle-in-cell code to determine its suitability for computing wake functions, and developed a procedure for extracting wake functions from a sequence of simulations using this code.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Beam Stability Overview [Slides]

Radiographic spot size is affected by many factors, including beam motion due to instabilities. Instabilities and effects that can influence the radiation-source spot size are being evaluated for the Scorpius flash-radiography accelerator. The Scorpius LIA design has a direct influence on beam stability. Many features of the design were specifically incorporated to mitigate instability. The major beam dynamics concerns for high-current LIAs are being evaluated for the long, 102-cell Scorpius design. For these results, all tools available were used including experimental data, analytic theory, and physics simulation codes.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Experimental Studies of Nonlinear Integrable Optics with Elliptic Potentials

The stable transport of charged particle beams is the core challenge in designing and operating accelerators. The current paradigm for transverse focusing is based on quadrupole and dipole elements, described as a linear integrable Hamiltonian by Courant and Snyder. The operational limits of high intensity accelerators are often determined by collective instabilities within the beam. Nonlinear elements may be added to suppress certain forms of these collective effects, but restrict the range of stable trajectories. These shortcomings motivate extending to a nonlinear integrable system which can offer the benefits of suppressing collective instabilities without limiting the stable trajectories. Danilov and Nagaitsev proposed a novel nonlinear integrable system with elliptical potentials, which could be implemented as magnetic elements in an accelerator. Such a system has been implemented for practical verification in the integrable optics test accelerator (IOTA), a small storage ring constructed for beam dynamics studies. Electron beam studies in IOTA treat the low-emittance beam as a macroparticle for detailed probing of the expected single particle dynamics. This dissertation details new measurements of the nonlinear integrable system relevant for practical implementation. Turn-by-turn measurements of the kicked beam responses are used for phase space reconstruction and analysis of the predicted nonlinear dynamics. The stability and aperture for various nonlinear configurations are measured with beam losses. Amplitude dependent detuning, a core figure of merit for suppressing instabilities, is measured and compared with high fidelity particle tracking simulations. The synchrotron radiation images of circulating beam allow direct measurements of the topology and lifetime in configurations where nonlinear focusing terms dominate.

Wieland, John [Michigan U.] (ORCID:000000028971852↗