Beam-plasma interaction experiments at the UCLA Neptune Laboratory

We are currently planning several beam-plasma interaction experiments using the high quality 16 MeV electron beam produced by the Neptune 1.625-cell photoinjector and PWT linac. The underdense (n_b > n₀) plasma lens experiment will examine the focusing of a 4 nC beam of 30 psec pulse duration as it passes through a thin 2 cm Ar plasma lens. We are also developing a negative R₅₆ compressor beamline that will allow us to create ramped sub-picosecond beams of a shape well suited for driving large amplitude plasma wake fields and producing high transformer ratios. Simulations made using the 2-1/2 dimensional particle-in-cell code MAGIC indicate that we could use these ramped beams to produce fields of up to 10 GeV/m in a 10¹⁶ cm^-3 plasma. Ramped beams are also suitable for driving plasma density gradient trapping experiments. When such a beam passes through a region where the plasma density drops suddenly the fast variation of the wake fields traps several pC of plasma electrons in the accelerating portion of the wake field