Author: Caldwell, A.
Paper Title Page
TUPEA008 Physics of the AWAKE Project 1179
 
  • P. Muggli, E. Oz, R. Tarkeshian
    MPI, Muenchen, Germany
  • C. Bracco, E. Gschwendtner, A. Pardons
    CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
  • A. Caldwell, O. Reimann
    MPI-P, München, Germany
  • K.V. Lotov
    BINP SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia
  • A.M. Pukhov
    HHUD, Dusseldorf, Germany
  • J. Vieira
    IPFN, Lisbon, Portugal
  • M. Wing
    UCL, London, United Kingdom
 
  The goal of the AWKAKE collaboration is the study of plasma wakefields driven by proton (p+) bunches through experiments, simulations and theory. Proton bunches are interesting wakefield drivers because they can be ultra-relativistic (TeVs/p+) and carry large amounts of energy (>kJ). It was demonstrated in simulations* that acceleration of an electron (e-) bunch from 10GeV to >500GeV can be achieved in ~500m of plasma driven by a 1TeV, 100micron-long, bunch with 1011 p+. Such short p+ bunches do not exist today. It was suggested** that a p+ bunch long compared to the plasma period can transversely self-modulate and resonantly drive wakefields to large amplitudes (~GV/m). Initial experiments based on self-modulation instability (SMI) will use single 12cm-long CERN SPS bunches with 1-3·1011, 450GeV p+ to study physics of SMI. With a plasma density of 7·1014/cc the plasma wave and modulation period is 1.3mm. The SMI saturates after ~3m with amplitude in the GV/m range. Later a low energy (~10MeV) witness e- bunch will be injected at the SMI saturation point. Energy gain over ~7m of plasma can reach the GeV level. Translation from physics to experimental plan and setup will be presented.
* A. Caldwell et al., Nature Physics 5, 363 (2009)
** N. Kumar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 255003 (2010)