Pump depletion in the plasma-beat-wave accelerator

Abstract

A closed, energy-conserving system of equations is derived describing the growth of the plasma beat wave and the decay of the driving electromagnetic pulse in the plasma-beat-wave accelerator. With the approximation that the electromagnetic phases are frozen, the pump-depletion equations are solved to determined the pump-depletion distance. A condition for minimizing the wake of plasma waves and maximizing the coherent acceleration length for the system is derived.