January 6, 2023 Other Open Access

Studying the impact of electron bunch characteristics on plasma wakefield performance using particle-in-cell simulations

Wrobel, Nico

The submitted version of my bachelor thesis + tex files and notebooks used for data evaluation.

Abstract

The accessibility of plasma-based accelerators was greatly expanded by the realization of laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA)-driven plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFA). This development speeds up research on PWFA significantly. In this thesis, 3D particle-in-cell-simulations were used to analyze driver parameters for a PWFA to achieve maximal energy gain for a hypothetical witness beam. Only small increases in witness energy were found when drivers with high kinetic energy were compared. In contrast, great witness energy increases result when the divergence of the driver gets reduced. The transformation of a driver in plasma is analyzed, and the influence of the wakefield on it is discussed. Additionally, evidence for non-constant peak energy is presented, with energy losses in the MeV scale independent from driver characteristics. This could require adjustments to the charge reconstruction of the LWFA bunch after the PWFA stage.