Abstract
The Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment (AWAKE) aims at studying plasma wakefield generation and electron acceleration driven by proton bunches. It is a proof-of-principle R&D experiment at CERN and the world׳s first proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment. The AWAKE experiment will be installed in the former CNGS facility and uses the 400GeV/c proton beam bunches from the SPS. The first experiments will focus on the self-modulation instability of the long (rms ~12cm) proton bunch in the plasma. These experiments are planned for the end of 2016. Later, in 2017/2018, low energy (~15MeV) electrons will be externally injected into the sample wakefields and be accelerated beyond 1GeV. The main goals of the experiment will be summarized. A summary of the AWAKE design and construction status will be presented.
Highlights
Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment (AWAKE) is a proof-of-concept acceleration experiment with the aim to inform a design for high energy frontier particle accelerators and is currently being built at CERN [1,2]
The AWAKE experiment is the world's first proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment, which will use a high-energy proton bunch to drive a plasma wakefield for electron beam acceleration
In order to drive the plasma wakefields efficiently, the length of the drive bunch has to be on the order of the plasma wavelength λpe, which corresponds to E 1 mm for the plasma density used in AWAKE (1014–1015 electrons/cm3)
Summary
AWAKE is a proof-of-concept acceleration experiment with the aim to inform a design for high energy frontier particle accelerators and is currently being built at CERN [1,2]. The AWAKE experiment is the world's first proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment, which will use a high-energy proton bunch to drive a plasma wakefield for electron beam acceleration. A 400 GeV/c proton beam will be extracted from the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron, SPS, and utilized as a drive beam for wakefields in a 10 m long plasma cell to accelerate electrons with amplitudes up to the GV/m level. The proton beam for AWAKE has a bunch length of σz 1⁄4 12 cm, the experiment relies on the self-modulation instability (SMI) [3], which modulates the proton driver at the plasma wavelength in the first few meters of plasma. In Phase 2, AWAKE aims at the first demonstration of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration of an electron witness beam; this programme is planned to start by the end of 2017. Simulations [4] show that this would optimize the acceleration of external electrons and reach even higher gradients
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