Advanced regimes of proton beam-driven plasma wake field acceleration

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Alexander Pukhov
• Subject Area: Optics, Quantum Optics and Physics of Atoms, Molecules and Plasmas
• Term: from 2010 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 164562715

The project is aimed at quest, analysis, and optimization of proton beam shapes and beam shaping techniques that would open a possibility of plasma wakefield acceleration of electrons to TeV-range energies on the basis of existing hadron colliders. Up to now, only laser pulses or electron bunches were considered as drivers for plasma wake fields. However, when the plasma wake field is driven by a laser pulse or by an electron beam, the energy gain in a single accelerating stage is limited to a few tens GeV, so that a staging is necessary to reach the TeV-range energies. Such staging is technically challenging. The recently proposed proton-driven wake field acceleration (Caldwell et al., Nature Physics 5, 363 (2009)) has the potential of bringing electrons beyond the TeV energy in a single acceleration stage. Yet, the scheme requires a longitudinal compression of the proton beam to the sub-millimeter scale, which is also demanding if accomplished with conventional techniques. In this project, we are going to search for plasma-based techniques of beam compression and shaping which, in combination with the conventional methods, should produce the proton beam suitable for driving the wake field. These include an externally seeded transverse two-stream instability, beam chopping by the wake field of an external source, and plasma-induced energy ramping.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Konstantiv Vladimirovich Lotov