Simulations of axial bunch compression in heavy ion rings for plasma physics applications at GSI

Simulations of axial bunch compression in heavy-ion rings have been carried out as part of a feasibility study for generating intense beams in a facility at GSI. The compression is implemented by a fast rotation of the longitudinal (||) phase space and results in greatly increased transverse (⊥) space-charge strength while the bunch is compressed in a dispersive ring from an initial prebunch with a (||) momentum spread of Δp/p≃10^-4 (full half-width) to a final spread of p/p≃1% at the final focus optic. The need to maintain beam quality during the compression results in numerous issues that are explored with PIC simulations