LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
A ceramic enhanced accelerator structure (CEAS) uses a concentric ceramic ring placed inside a metallic pillbox cavity to significantly increase the shunt impedance of the cavity. Single cell standing wave CEAS cavities are designed, built, and tested at low power at 5.1 GHz. The results indicate 40% increase in shunt impedance compared to that of a purely metallic pillbox cavity. A beam test setup has been designed to use a single cell CEAS cavity to modulate a 30-keV direct-current (DC) electron beam at an accelerating gradient of 1 to 2 MV/m to verify the beam acceleration capability of the CEAS concept and to study the potential charging effect on the ceramic component during the operation. Another single cell standing wave CEAS cavity has been designed for high power test at 5.7 GHz for the high accelerating gradient capability.
LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
We report our comparison study on the first stage electron bunch compression schemes at 750 MeV using a conventional and a double C-chicane for the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) under development for the Matter-Radiation Interactions in Extremes (MaRIE) initiative at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Compared to the performance of the conventional C-chicane bunch compressor, the double C-chicane scheme exhibits the capability of utilizing the transverse momentum shift induced by the coherent synchrotron radiation in the second C-chicane to compensate that generated in the first C-chicane, resulting in a compressed electron bunch with minimized transverse momentum shift along the beam. It is also found that the double C-chicane scheme can be designed to significantly better preserve the beam emittance in the course of the bunch compression. This is particularly beneficial for the MaRIE XFEL whose lasing performance critically depends on the preservation of the ultralow beam emittance.
LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
UMD, College Park, Maryland, USA
We present our experimental design and low power test results of a structure for the proof-of-principle demonstration of fast increase of the first harmonic current content in a bunched electron beam, using the technique of electrostatic potential depression (EPD). A primarily bunched electron beam from an inductive output tube (IOT) at 710 MHz first enters an idler cavity, where the longitudinal slope of the beam energy distribution is reversed. The beam then transits through an EPD section implemented by a short beam pipe with a negative high voltage bias, inside which the rate of increase of the first harmonic current is significantly enhanced. An output cavity measures the harmonic current developed inside the beam downstream of the EPD section. Low power test results of the idler and the output cavities agree with the theoretical design.
LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
We present our numerical approach and preliminary results of the calculations of whistler and X-mode wave generation by a bunched electron beam in space. The artificial generation of whistler and X-mode plasma waves in space is among the candidate techniques to accomplish the radiation belt remediation (RBR), in an effort to precipitate energetic electrons towards the atmosphere to reduce their threat to low-Earth orbit satellites. Free-space propagation of an electron pulse in a constant background magnetic field was simulated with the CST particle-in-cell (PIC) solver, with the temporal evolution of the beam recorded. The SpectralPlasmaSolver (SPS) was then modified to use the recorded electron pulse propagation to calculate the real-time plasma waves generated by the beam. SPS simulation results of the wave generation for the upcoming Beam-PIE experiment as well as an ideal bunched electron beam are shown.
LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
The microbunching instability in linear accelerators can significantly increase the energy spread of an electron beam. The instability can be suppressed by artificially increasing the random energy spread of an electron beam, but this leads to unacceptably high energy spreads for future XFEL systems. One possibility of suppressing this instability is to use laser assisted bunch compression (LABC) instead of the second chicane in an XFEL system, thereby eliminating the cascaded chicane effect that magnifies the microbunching instability. An experiment is proposed at ATF to test this concept, and numerical simulations of the experiment are shown.