Session C6 - Laser and Plasma Acceleration.
INVITED session, Saturday afternoon, April 29
Beacon A, LBHR
The plasma lens was proposed(P. Chen, Part. Acc. 20), 171 (1987). as a final focusing mechanism to achieve high luminosity for future high energy linear colliders. Previous experiments(See, for example, R.~Govil~et al.), Phys. Rev. Lett, 86, No. 16, 3202 (1999), and references therein. to test this concept were carried out at low energy densities. In this talk, results from the SLAC E-150 experiment(P.~Chen~et al.), Proposal for a Plasma Lens Experiment at the Final Focus Test Beam, SLAC Expt. Prop. E-150, April 1997. on plasma lens focusing of a high energy density beam with parameters relevant to linear colliders are presented and compared with theoretical expectations. The experiment was carried out at the SLAC Final Focus Test Beam, with nominal parameters of 30 GeV beam energy, 1.5\times 10^10 electrons per bunch, bunch length \sigma_z = 0.7~mm and beam cross-section \sigma_x^* \times \sigma_y^* = 7~\mum \times 3~\mum. The plasma lens was produced by a fast pulsing gas-jet providing a neutral Nitrogen gas column with density up to 5\times 10^18 / cm^3. The gas was then ionized by the leading portion of the incident high energy density electron beam, while the rest of the electrons in the same bunch were focused by the strong plasma pinching force and a reduction in the beam size of up to 40% was measured. The beam waist was also measured and compared with detailed numerical calculations with a particles-in-cell code. The reduction in focal length indicated a focusing strength approximately 100 times that of the FFTB final focus magnets. The synchrotron radiation with critical energy in the 1-10 MeV range due to the strong bending of beam particles inside the plasma lens was observed for the first time.