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Simulation studies of plasma wakefield acceleration
[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2018.
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Abstract
Plasma-based accelerators offer the potential to achieve accelerating gradients orders of magnitude higher than are typical in conventional accelerators. A Plasma Accelerator Research Station has been proposed using the CLARA accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory. In this thesis, theory and the results of particle-in-cell simulations are presented investigating experiments that could be conducted using CLARA as well as the preceding VELA and CLARA Front End. Plasma wakefield acceleration was found to be viable with both CLARA and CLARA Front End, with accelerating gradients of GV/m and 100 MV/m scale respectively. Drive-witness and tailored bunch structures based on the CLARA bunch were also investigated. Plasma focus- ing of the VELA and CLARA Front End bunches was studied in simulations, showing that substantial focusing gradient could be achieved using a passive plasma lens. A plasma beam dump scheme using varying plasma density is also presented. This scheme allows the performance of a passive plasma beam dump to be maintained as the bunch is decelerated and has some advantages over a previously proposed method.