Plasma Wakefield Accelerators, and Solutions to Compactness and Efficiency

Plasma wakefield acceleration presents important solutions to the emerging challenges of modern particle accelerators, and thus has the potential to shape the future of accelerator technology in our society. I will be presenting my work on plasma wakefield accelerators during my undergraduate internships, including my work on the adiabatic focusing response of low density plasmas at CERN's Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Accelerator Experiment (AWAKE), as well as my work on nonlinear optics and plasma mirrors at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The technical concepts that I have pursued (and will investigate further), could become critical tools in enabling not only compactness in accelerator applications, but also doing so in an energy-efficient manner.