Wakefield in a waveguide

The feasibility of an experiment which is being set up in our plasma laboratory to study the effect of a wakefield formed by an ultra-short (≤10−9 s) high-power (∼1 GW) microwave (10 GHz) pulse propagating in a cylindrical waveguide filled with an under-dense [(2–5) × 1010 cm−3] plasma is modeled theoretically and simulated by a particle in cell code. It is shown that the radial ponderomotive force plays a circular key role in the wakefield formation by the TM mode waveguide. The model and the simulations show that powerful microwave pulses produce a wakefield at lower plasma density and electric field gradients but larger space and time scales compared to the laser produced wakefield in plasmas, thus providing a more accessible platform for the experimental study.