Driving positron beam acceleration with coherent transition radiation

Journal article, 2020

Positron acceleration in plasma wakefield faces significant challenges, as the positron beam must be pre-generated and precisely coupled into the wakefield and, most critically, suffers from defocusing issues. Here we propose a scheme that utilizes laser-driven electrons to produce, inject, and accelerate positrons in a single setup. The high-charge electron beam from wakefield acceleration creates copious electron–positron pairs via the Bethe–Heitler process, followed by enormous coherent transition radiation due to the electrons’ exiting from the metallic foil. Simulation results show that the coherent transition radiation field reaches up to tens of GV m−1, which captures and accelerates the positrons to cut-off energy of 1.5 GeV with energy peak of 500 MeV (energy spread ~ 24.3%). An external longitudinal magnetic field of 30 T is also applied to guide the electrons and positrons during the acceleration process. This proposed method offers a promising way to obtain GeV fast positron sources.