Plasma wakefield acceleration is nowadays very attractive in terms of accelerating gradient, able to overcome conventional accelerators by orders of magnitude. However, this poses very demanding requirements on the accelerator stability to avoid large instabilities on the final beam energy. In this study we analyze the correlation between the driver-witness distance jitter (due to the RF timing jitter) and the witness energy gain in a plasma wakefield accelerator stage. Experimental measurements are reported by using an electro-optical sampling diagnostics with which we correlate the distance between the driver and witness beams prior to the plasma accelerator stage. The results show a clear correlation due to such a distance jitter highlighting the contribution coming from the RF compression.

Plasma wakefield acceleration is nowadays very attractive in terms of accelerating gradient, able to overcome conventional accelerators by orders of magnitude. However, this poses very demanding requirements on the accelerator stability to avoid large instabilities on the final beam energy. In this study we analyze the correlation between the driver-witness distance jitter (due to the RF timing jitter) and the witness energy gain in a plasma wakefield accelerator stage. Experimental measurements are reported by using an electro-optical sampling diagnostics with which we correlate the distance between the driver and witness beams prior to the plasma accelerator stage. The results show a clear correlation due to such a distance jitter highlighting the contribution coming from the RF compression.