Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A near-hollow plasma channel, where the plasma density in the channel is much less than the plasma density in the walls, is proposed to provide independent control over the focusing and accelerating forces in a plasma accelerator. In this geometry the low density in the channel contributes to the focusing forces, while the accelerating fields are determined by the high density in the channel walls. The channel also provides guiding for intense laser pulses used for wakefield excitation. Both electron and positron beams can be accelerated in a nearly symmetric fashion. Near-hollow plasma channels can effectively mitigate emittance growth due to Coulomb scattering for high energy physics applications.