Plasma Source Development for Plasma Wakefield Accelerators

Conventional accelerators tend to be huge to allow particles to reach velocitiess close to the speed of light. Electron driven Plasma Wakefield Accelerators (PWFA), on the contrary, provide "high gradient acceleration" which means particles can attain high speeds in significantly shorter time and distance. This allows the accelerator to be orders of magnitude smaller and therefore less expensive. In a PWFA, one electron bunch drives a strong wake in a plasma and a second electron bunch is accelerated in the plasma wake. This scheme has been shown to work, and the next research goal is to preserve the quality of the accelerated beam, which requires the correct plasma source. Research into the development of the plasma source is presented. Special optical configurations are tested that can focus a laser into a gas in order to produce the appropriate plasma density profile.