The longitudinal dynamics of space charge dominated electron beams plays an important role in particle accelerators and other applications such as heavy ion fusion and free electron lasers (FELs). All beams are space-charge dominated near the source. By means of experiments on the University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER), we studied how a perturbation to the line charge density could affect the beam propagation. When starting with large-amplitude perturbations, we have observed, for the first time in charged particle beams, solitary waves for which the nonlinear steepening exactly balances the wave dispersion, leading to persistent waves that preserves their shape over a long distance.

For additional information about the IREAP Graduate Student Seminars, contact David Meichle at dmeichle at umd.edu or Kevin Schoeffler at kschoeff at umd.edu.

The schedule for the IREAP Graduate Student Seminars can be found at http://www.ireap.umd.edu/ireap/seminars/grad/sem-grad.htm.