Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A plasma decelerating stage is investigated as a compact alternative for the disposal of high-energy beams (beamdumps). This could benefit the design of laser-driven plasma accelerator (LPA) applications that require transportability and or high-repetition-rate operation regimes. Passive and laser-driven (active) plasma-based beam dumps are studied analyticallyand with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations in a 1D geometry. Analytical estimates for the beam energy loss are comparedto and extended by the PIC simulations, showing that with the proposed schemes a beam can be efficiently decelerated in acentimeter-scale distance.