Particle physics applications of the AWAKE acceleration scheme
arXiv:1812.11164
Abstract
The AWAKE experiment had a very successful Run 1 (2016-8), demonstrating proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration for the first time, through the observation of the modulation of a long proton bunch into micro-bunches and the acceleration of electrons up to 2 GeV in 10 m of plasma. The aims of AWAKE Run 2 (2021-4) are to have high-charge bunches of electrons accelerated to high energy, about 10 GeV, maintaining beam quality through the plasma and showing that the process is scalable. The AWAKE scheme is therefore a promising method to accelerate electrons to high energy over short distances and so develop a useable technology for particle physics experiments. Using proton bunches from the SPS, the acceleration of electron bunches up to about 50 GeV should be possible. Using the LHC proton bunches to drive wakefields could lead to multi-TeV electron bunches, e.g. with 3 TeV acceleration achieved in 4 km of plasma. This document outlines some of the applications of the AWAKE scheme to particle physics and shows that the AWAKE technology could lead to unique facilities and experiments that would otherwise not be possible. In particular, experiments are proposed to search for dark photons, measure strong field QED and investigate new physics in electron-proton collisions. The community is also invited to consider applications for electron beams up to the TeV scale.
arXiv comment12 pages, 8 figures, submitted to the European Particle Physics Strategy Update process. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1810.12254
References in corpus (6)
- 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
- Measuring the Boiling Point of the Vacuum of Quantum Electrodynamics
- Proposal for an Experiment to Search for Light Dark Matter at the SPS
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Cited by in corpus (6)
- The Dark Photon
- Asymmetric Matters from a Dark First-Order Phase Transition
- Linear Sigma Dark Matter
- New Thermal Relic Targets for Inelastic Vector-Portal Dark Matter
- Complementary Searches of Low Mass Non-Abelian Vector Dark Matter, Dark Photon and Dark
- LHC experiments for long-lived particles of the dark sector