Hosing Instability in the Blow-Out Regime for Plasma-Wakefield Acceleration

The electron hosing instability in the blow-out regime of plasma-wakefield acceleration is investigated using a linear perturbation theory about the electron blow-out trajectory in Lu et al. [in Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 165002 (2006)]. The growth of the instability is found to be affected by the beam parameters unlike in the standard theory Whittum et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 991 (1991)] which is strictly valid for preformed channels. Particle-in-cell simulations agree with this new theory, which predicts less hosing growth than found by the hosing theory of Whittum et al.

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