Trapping of background plasma electrons by a beam-driven plasma wake field is studied as a new self-injection method. In this scheme, a short electron beam pulse is sent through an underdense plasma with a downward density transition and some background plasma electrons are trapped by the strong wake field due to the sudden increase of the wake wave wavelength at the density transition. Two-dimensional PIC (Particle-In-Cell) simulations show that a significant amount of plasma electrons are trapped and accelerated to a higher energy than the driving beam energy. Furthermore, the trapped-beam quality is fairly good. In this paper, the 2-D simulation results, dynamics of the trapped beam and the driving beam, and the proposed experiment for the UCLA Neptune Laboratory are described.
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