Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Emissions produced or initiated by a 30 GeV electron beam propagating through a ~ 1 m long heat pipe oven containing neutral and partially inoized vapor have been measured near atomic spectral lines in a beam-plasma wakefield experiment. The Cerenkov spatial profile has been studied as a function of oven temperature and pressure, observation wavelength, and ionizing laser intensity and delay. The Cerenkov peak angle is affected by the creating of plasma, and estimates of neutral and plasma density have been extracted. Increases in visible background radiation, consistent with increased plasma recombination emissions due to dissipation of wakefields, were simultaneously measured.