Simulation studies of beam dynamics in 50 MeV linear accelerator with laser-plasma electron gun

Abstract

Conventionally, electron guns with thermionic cathodes or field-emission cathodes are used for research or technological linear accelerators. RF-photoguns are used to provide the short electron bunches which could be used for FEL’s of compact research facilities to generate monochromatic photons. Low energy of emitted electrons is the key problem for photoguns due to high influence of Coulomb field and difficulties with the first accelerating cell simulation and construction. Contrary, plasma sources, based on the laser-plasma wakefield acceleration, have very high acceleration gradient but rather broad energy spectrum compared with conventional thermoguns or field-emission guns. The beam dynamics in the linear accelerator combines the laser-plasma electron source and conventional RF linear accelerator is discussed in this paper. Method to capture and re-accelerate the short picosecond bunch with extremely broad energy spread (up to 50 %) is presented. Numerical simulation shows that such bunches can be accelerated in RF linear accelerator to the energy of 50 MeV with output energy spread not higher than 1 % .