Plasma electron trapping in quasistatic simulations of plasma wakefield acceleration

Abstract

Plasma wakefield acceleration studies currently rely considerably on simulating this effect numerically using highly specialized software. Exorbitant computational difficulty of the problem requires simplifying models and methods,limiting such software applicability. Quasistatic approximation, for example, utilizes a plasma model that does not include trapping plasma electrons by the wakefield. This article presents a method that reuses a quasistatic plasma-beam solver to calculate parameters of wakefield-trapped plasma electrons.