AWAKE: On the path to particle physics applications

Abstract

Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration allows the transfer of energy from a proton bunch to a trailing bunch of particles, the `witness' particles, via plasma electrons. The AWAKE experiment at CERN is pursuing a demonstration of this scheme using bunches of protons from the CERN SPS. Assuming continued success of the AWAKE program, high energy electron or muon beams will become available, opening up an extensive array of future particle physics projects from beam dump searches for new weakly interacting particles such as Dark Photons, to fixed target physics programs, to energy frontier electron-proton, electron-ion, electron-positron and muon colliders. The time is right for the particle physics community to offer strong support to the pursuit of this new technology as it will open up new avenues for high energy particle physics.

References in corpus (5)

• Search for MeV dark photons in a light-shining-through-walls experiment at CERN
• Experimental observation of proton bunch modulation in a plasma, at varying plasma densities
• Experimental observation of plasma wakefield growth driven by the seeded self-modulation of a proton bunch
• Polarized Beam Conditioning in Plasma Based Acceleration
• Proposal for an Experiment to Search for Light Dark Matter at the SPS

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Particle physics applications of the AWAKE acceleration scheme