Status and Prospects for the AWAKE Experiment

Abstract

The AWAKE Collaboration is pursuing a demonstration of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration of electrons. The AWAKE experiment uses a \SI{400}{GeV/c} proton bunch from the CERN SPS, with a rms bunch length of $6$-\SI{15}{cm}, to drive wakefields in a \SI{10}{m} long rubidium plasma with an electron density of $10^{14}-10^{15}$cm${}^{-3}$. Since the drive bunch length is much longer than the plasma wavelength (${\lambda }_{pe}<$\SI{3}{mm}) for these plasma densities, AWAKE performed experiments to prove that the long proton bunch self-modulates in the plasma (2017). The next step is to demonstrate acceleration of electrons in the wakefields driven by the self-modulated bunch (2018). We summarize the concept of the self-modulation measurements and describe the plans and challenges for the electron acceleration experiments.

References in corpus (3)

• AWAKE, The Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment at CERN
• Path to AWAKE: Evolution of the concept
• A Rubidium Vapor Source for a Plasma Source for AWAKE