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Title: Acceleration of electrons in the plasma wakefield of a proton bunch

Journal Article · · Nature (London)

High-energy particle accelerators have been crucial in providing a deeper understanding of fundamental particles and the forces that govern their interactions. To increase the energy of the particles or to reduce the size of the accelerator, new acceleration schemes need to be developed. Plasma wakefield acceleration, in which the electrons in a plasma are excited, leading to strong electric fields (so called ‘wakefields’), is one such promising acceleration technique. Experiments have shown that an intense laser pulse or electron bunch traversing a plasma can drive electric fields of tens of gigavolts per metre and above—well beyond those achieved in conventional radio-frequency accelerators (about 0.1 gigavolt per metre). However, the low stored energy of laser pulses and electron bunches means that multiple acceleration stages are needed to reach very high particle energies. The use of proton bunches is compelling because they have the potential to drive wakefields and to accelerate electrons to high energy in a single acceleration stage. Long, thin proton bunches can be used because they undergo a process called self-modulation, a particle–plasma interaction that splits the bunch longitudinally into a series of high-density microbunches, which then act resonantly to create large wakefields. The Advanced Wakefield (AWAKE) experiment at CERN uses high-intensity proton bunches—in which each proton has an energy of 400 gigaelectronvolts, resulting in a total bunch energy of 19 kilojoules—to drive a wakefield in a ten-metre-long plasma. Electron bunches are then injected into this wakefield. Here we present measurements of electrons accelerated up to two gigaelectronvolts at the AWAKE experiment, in a demonstration of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration. Measurements were conducted under various plasma conditions and the acceleration was found to be consistent and reliable. The potential for this scheme to produce very high-energy electron bunches in a single accelerating stage means that our results are an important step towards the development of future high-energy particle accelerators.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; Russian Science Foundation; German Research Foundation (DFG); National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Portuguese FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology
Contributing Organization:
AWAKE Collaboration
OSTI ID:
1543771
Journal Information:
Nature (London), Vol. 561, Issue 7723; ISSN 0028-0836
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 121 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (32)

High energy proton micro-bunches from a laser plasma accelerator journal September 2019
Witness emittance growth caused by driver density fluctuations in plasma wakefield accelerators journal September 2018
Mapping electromagnetic fields structure in plasma using a spin polarized electron beam journal December 2019
First fully kinetic three-dimensional simulation of the AWAKE baseline scenario journal September 2019
Accelerating field enhancement due to ion motion in plasma wakefield accelerators journal October 2019
Tailored plasma-density profiles for enhanced energy extraction in passive plasma beam dumps journal October 2019
Hybrid LWFA–PWFA staging as a beam energy and brightness transformer: conceptual design and simulations
  • Martinez de la Ossa, A.; Assmann, R. W.; Bussmann, M.
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 377, Issue 2151 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2018.0175
journal June 2019
Particle physics experiments based on the AWAKE acceleration scheme journal June 2019
Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration in AWAKE
  • Gschwendtner, E.; Turner, M.; Adli, E.
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 377, Issue 2151 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2018.0418
journal June 2019
Directions in plasma wakefield acceleration
  • Hidding, B.; Foster, B.; Hogan, M. J.
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 377, Issue 2151 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2019.0215
journal June 2019
Propagation of ultrashort resonant ionizing laser pulses in rubidium vapor journal June 2019
Shaping trailing beams for beam loading via beam-induced-ionization injection at FACET journal November 2019
Visualization of relativistic laser pulses in underdense plasma journal March 2020
Polarized electron acceleration in beam-driven plasma wakefield based on density down-ramp injection journal October 2019
Dust-acoustic soliton breaking and the associated acceleration of charged particles journal December 2019
Experimental Observation of Proton Bunch Modulation in a Plasma at Varying Plasma Densities journal February 2019
Mapping electromagnetic fields structure in plasma using a spin polarized electron beam text January 2019
Visualization of relativistic laser pulses in underdense plasma text January 2020
Visualization of Relativistic Laser Pulses in Underdense Plasma text January 2020
Experimental observation of plasma wakefield growth driven by the seeded self-modulation of a proton bunch text January 2018
Experimental observation of proton bunch modulation in a plasma, at varying plasma densities text January 2018
Particle physics experiments based on the AWAKE acceleration scheme text January 2018
Proton-Irradiation-Immune Electronics Implemented with Two-Dimensional Charge-Density-Wave Devices text January 2019
Hybrid LWFA $\vert$ PWFA Staging as a Beam Energy and Brightness Transformer : Conceptual Design and Simulations text January 2019
Quantum Mechanisms of Electron and Positron Acceleration through Nonlinear Compton Scatterings and Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler Processes in Coherent Photon Dominated Regime journal December 2019
Machine Learning Platform: Deploying and Managing Models in the CERN Control System text January 2022
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