UCLA, Los Angeles, California
Funding: Work Supported by US Department of Energy
Plasma-based accelerators are one of the emerging technologies that could revolutionize e-/e+ colliders, significantly reducing their size and cost by operating at multi-GeV/m accelerating gradients. Proof-of-principle experiments at SLAC have demonstrated the energy doubling of 42 GeV incoming e- in a plasma only ≈85 cm-long,* corresponding to an unloaded gradient of ≈50 GeV/m. Plasma wakes driven by e+ bunches are different from those driven by e- bunches. The acceleration of e+ in plasmas has been demonstrate,** but the acceleration of high-quality e+ beams is challenging. Measurements show that single e+ bunches suffer halo formation and emittance growth when propagating through dense meter-scale, uniform plasmas.*** Advanced schemes, such as hollow plasma channels, or e+ bunch acceleration on the wake driven by a e bunch, may have to be used in a future plasma-based linear collider. Experimental results obtained with e+ beams in plasmas will be reviewed and compared to those obtained with e- beams. Future experiments including a new scheme to produce a drive e bunch closely followed by a witness e+ bunch appropriate for PWFA experiments will also be discussed.
*I. Blumenfeld et al., Nature 445, 741-744 (15 February 2007).
**B.E. Blue et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 214801 (2003).
***P. Muggli et al., accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2008).
LBNL, Berkeley, California
Laser driven plasma wakefields have recently accelerated electron beams with quasi-monoenergetic energy distributions and with gradients of ~100 GV/m. Stabilization and optimization of beam quality are now essential. Recent LBNL experiments have demonstrated control of self trapping, resulting in reproducible bunches at 0.5 GeV. Further optimization has been demonstrated using plasma density gradients to control trapping, producing beams with very low absolute momentum spread at low energies. Simulations indicate that use of these beams as an injector greatly improves accelerator performance and experiments are now underway to demonstrate such staging, which will be a crucial technology for laser driven linacs. This talk will cover recent progress in LWFAs to obtain more reproducible, higher quality beams and also cover staging prospects for high energy laser linacs.