Compare electron- and positron-driven magnetized wakefields

Determine whether the magnetized plasma-wakefield scheme provides better positron acceleration when driven by a positron beam than when driven by an electron beam, through a controlled comparison of the two drivers’ transport performance.

Background

The paper develops a positron-acceleration scheme in which a strong uniform axial magnetic field causes expelled plasma electrons to gyrate and re-converge into broad on-axis electron columns. These columns provide simultaneous focusing and acceleration for a positron witness bunch in an electron-beam-driven nonlinear blowout wakefield.

The authors note that the cyclotron clock determining the image spacing is independent of the driver-charge sign, while the driver determines the phase anchoring and quality of the resulting accelerating band. Exploratory scans favor the electron driver, but the relative transport performance of electron- and positron-driven configurations has not been established by a controlled comparison.

References

It seems natural to wonder whether the same scheme may do even better if applied to plasma wakefields driven by positron beams. The clock itself has no preferred sign of driver charge; the driver does not set the spacing of the images, but rather the phase they are anchored to and the quality of the band they form. In our exploratory scans, the resulting quality favors the electron driver. A controlled transport comparison of the two is left to future work.

— Magnetizing nonlinear plasma wakefields for positron acceleration  (2608.30455 - Liu et al., 31 Aug 2026) in Section discussing driver-charge dependence, immediately after the simulation setup