Experimental Observation of Plasma Wakefield Growth Driven by the Seeded Self-Modulation of a Proton Bunch

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 122; no. 5; p. 054801
• Main Authors: Turner, M, Adli, E, Ahuja, A, Apsimon, O, Apsimon, R, Bachmann, A-M, Barros Marin, M, Barrientos, D, Batsch, F, Batkiewicz, J, Bauche, J, Berglyd Olsen, V K, Bernardini, M, Biskup, B, Boccardi, A, Bogey, T, Bohl, T, Bracco, C, Braunmüller, F, Burger, S, Burt, G, Bustamante, S, Buttenschön, B, Caldwell, A, Cascella, M, Chappell, J, Chevallay, E, Chung, M, Cooke, D, Damerau, H, Deacon, L, Deubner, L H, Dexter, A, Doebert, S, Farmer, J, Fedosseev, V N, Fior, G, Fiorito, R, Fonseca, R A, Friebel, F, Garolfi, L, Gessner, S, Gorgisyan, I, Gorn, A A, Granados, E, Grulke, O, Gschwendtner, E, Guerrero, A, Hansen, J, Helm, A, Henderson, J R, Hessler, C, Hofle, W, Hüther, M, Ibison, M, Jensen, L, Jolly, S, Keeble, F, Kim, S-Y, Kraus, F, Lefevre, T, LeGodec, G, Li, Y, Liu, S, Lopes, N, Lotov, K V, Maricalva Brun, L, Martyanov, M, Mazzoni, S, Medina Godoy, D, Minakov, V A, Mitchell, J, Molendijk, J C, Mompo, R, Moody, J T, Moreira, M, Muggli, P, Öz, E, Ozturk, E, Mutin, C, Pasquino, C, Pardons, A, Peña Asmus, F, Pepitone, K, Perera, A, Petrenko, A, Pitman, S, Plyushchev, G, Pukhov, A, Rey, S, Rieger, K, Ruhl, H, Schmidt, J S, Shalimova, I A, Shaposhnikova, E, Sherwood, P, Silva, L O, Soby, L, Sosedkin, A P, Speroni, R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 08.02.2019
• ISSN: 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.054801

We measure the effects of transverse wakefields driven by a relativistic proton bunch in plasma with densities of 2.1×10^{14} and 7.7×10^{14}  electrons/cm^{3}. We show that these wakefields periodically defocus the proton bunch itself, consistently with the development of the seeded self-modulation process. We show that the defocusing increases both along the bunch and along the plasma by using time resolved and time-integrated measurements of the proton bunch transverse distribution. We evaluate the transverse wakefield amplitudes and show that they exceed their seed value (<15  MV/m) and reach over 300  MV/m. All these results confirm the development of the seeded self-modulation process, a necessary condition for external injection of low energy and acceleration of electrons to multi-GeV energy levels.