Eur. Phys. J. D 63, 407-419 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20132-2

Regular Article

Process dynamics and thermodynamics of charged particle beams which remain equipartitioned

CEA, CEA-Saclay IRFU DSM, Bat. 122, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

^a e-mail: wilson.simeoni@cea.fr

Received: 27 February 2011
Received in final form: 13 April 2011
Published online: 23 June 2011

Abstract

This paper examines the process dynamics and thermodynamics of charged particle beams which remain equipartitioned. Considering a high-intensity ion beam in a space-charge dominated regime and with an initially large mismatched RMS beam size, we observe a fast increasing spatial anisotropy of the beam. Since space-charge interactions in a high-intensity linear accelerator can lead to energy equipartition between the degrees of freedom, this anisotropization phenomena suggest a kind of route to equipartition. In this paper we show that the particle-particle resonances and mode-particle resonances lead to the anisotropization of the beam, that is, both the envelope ratio and the emittance ratio are different from one. We propose that this anisotropy is responsible for the beam’s equipartitioning. The results suggest that the beam remains equipartitioned when it exhibits a macroscopic anisotropy, which is characterized by the following properties: the development of an elliptical shape with increasing size along a direction, the presence of a coupling between transversal emittances, halo formation along a preferential direction, stationarity of the temperature and a growth of the entropy in the cascade form. We call the state characterized by these properties as an anisotropic equipartition state.