EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF SOLITON WAVE TRAINS IN INTENSE ELECTRON BEAMS

Longitudinal perturbations in intense beams can lead to instabilities or degradation of beam quality, ultimately affecting the performance of accelerators, especially near the source where space charge is important. In this experimental study, conducted on the University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER), large-amplitude perturbations are purposefully generated and their propagation observed over a long transport length. It is found that narrow, large-amplitude perturbations on a long-pulse beam develop into Korteweg-deVries (KdV) type soliton wave trains. Each peak in the wave train has a constant width and amplitude over a long propagation distance, with the amplitude inversely proportional to the square of the width. Furthermore, two such pulses are seen to interact with each other and emerge from the collision unchanged. The experimental data is compared with the KdV model and particle-in-cell simulations with good agreement.