Emittance growth is an important issue for plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFAs). Multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS) is one factor that contributes to this growth. Here, the MCS emittance growth of an electron beam traveling through a PWFA in the blow out regime is calculated.The calculation uses well established formulas for angular scatter in a neutral vapor and then extends the range of Coulomb interaction to include the effects of traveling through an ion column. Emittance growth is negligible for low Z materials; however, becomes important for high Z materials.

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In the recent plasma wakefield accelerator experiments at SLAC, the energy of the particles in the tail of the 42 GeV electron beam were doubled in less than one meter [1]. Simulations suggest that the acceleration length was limited by a new phenomenon -beam head erosion in self-ionized plasmas. In vacuum, a particle beam expands transversely in a distance given by * . In the blowout regime of a plasma wakefield [2], the majority of the beam is focused by the ion channel, while the beam head slowly spreads since it takes a finite time for the ion channel to form. It is observed that in self-ionized plasmas, the head spreading is exacerbated compared to that in pre-ionized plasmas, causing the ionization front to move backward (erode). A simple theoretical model is used to estimate the upper limit of the erosion rate for a bi-gaussian beam by assuming free expansion of the beam head before the ionization front. Comparison with simulations suggests that half this maximum value can serve as an estimate for the erosion rate. Critical parameters to the erosion rate are discussed.

Recent electron beam driven plasma wakefield accelerator experiments carried out at SLAC showed trapping of plasma electrons. These trapped electrons appeared on an energy spectrometer with smaller transverse size than the beam driving the wake. A connection is made between transverse size and emittance; due to the spectrometer's resolution, this connection allows for placing an upper limit on the trapped electron emittance. The upper limit for the lowest normalized emittance measured in the experiment is 1 mm·mrad.