Injector and beam transport simulation study of proton dielectric wall accelerator

A simulation study of a short-pulsed proton injector for, and beam transport in, a dielectric wall accelerator (DWA) has been carried out using the particle-in-cell (PIC) code Warp. It was shown that applying “tilt pulse” voltage waveforms on three electrodes enables the production of a shorter bunch by the injector. The fields in the DWA beam tube were simulated using Computer Simulation Technology’s Microwave Studio (CST MWS) package, with various choices for the boundary conditions. For acceleration in the DWA, the beam transport was simulated with Warp, using applied fields obtained by running CST MWS. Our simulations showed that the electric field at the entrance to the DWA represents a challenging issue for the beam transport. We thus simulated a configuration with a mesh at the entrance of the DWA, intended to improve the entrance field. In these latter simulations, a proton bunch was successfully accelerated from 130 keV to about 36 MeV in a DWA with a length of 36.75 cm. As the beam bunch progresses, its transverse dimensions diminish from (roughly) 0.5×0.5 cm to 0.2×0.4 cm. The beam pulse lengthens from 1 cm to 2 cm due to lack of longitudinal compression fields.