AWAKE: plasma wakefield acceleration for applications to particle physics and strong-field QED

AWAKE has demonstrated that plasma wakefields can transform a long proton bunch into a train of microbunches that resonantly drives wakefields to large amplitudes [1,2,3]. Seeding makes the process reproducible, a necessary condition for an accelerator. Based on these remarkable results, we have developed a plan [4] to be able to accelerate externally-injected electron bunches to energies from 50 to 200GeV for application to particle physics and strong-field QED [5]. The plan consists first of injection experiments with a 150MeV electron bunch into a 10m-long, laser-ionized accelerator plasma, following the self-modulator plasma. Second, experiments will be conducted with two, 10m-long discharge plasma sources, sources that can be stacked to form long plasmas, to demonstrate scalability of the plasma, and of the acceleration.

[1] The AWAKE Collaboration, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 054802 (2019)

[2] M. Turner et al., AWAKE Collaboration, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 054801 (2019)

[3] The AWAKE Collaboration, Nature 561, 363 (2018)

[4] P. Muggli, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1596 012008 (2020)

[5] E. Gschwendtner et al., (AWAKE Collaboration) Symmetry, 14(8), 1680 (2022)