Limits on energy recovery for positron acceleration in a warm plasma column

Abstract

Beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) is a promising candidate for realizing a future linear collider, owing to the extremely high field gradients that are produced in plasmas. Despite recent success in high-gradient and high-efficiency electron PWFA, efficient positron PWFA remains a challenge. The warm plasma column regime offers stable, high-quality acceleration of positron beams in a plasma electron filament, albeit at low energy-transfer efficiencies. We explore the possibility of employing an electron energy recovery beam to extract residual energy from the plasma wakefield and increase the efficiency of this scheme. Our particle-in-cell simulations reveal that certain mechanisms, including higher-order ionization and ion motion, limit our ability to further extract energy from the plasma wakefield.