TY - JOUR

T1 - Acceleration of electrons in the plasma wakefield of a proton bunch

AU - (AWAKE Collaboration)

AU - Adli, E.

AU - Ahuja, A.

AU - Apsimon, O.

AU - Apsimon, R.

AU - Bachmann, A. M.

AU - Barrientos, D.

AU - Batsch, F.

AU - Bauche, J.

AU - Berglyd Olsen, V. K.

AU - Bernardini, M.

AU - Bohl, T.

AU - Bracco, C.

AU - Braunmüller, F.

AU - Burt, G.

AU - Buttenschön, B.

AU - Caldwell, A.

AU - Cascella, M.

AU - Chappell, J.

AU - Chevallay, E.

AU - Chung, M.

AU - Cooke, D.

AU - Damerau, H.

AU - Deacon, L.

AU - Deubner, L. H.

AU - Dexter, A.

AU - Doebert, S.

AU - Farmer, J.

AU - Fedosseev, V. N.

AU - Fiorito, R.

AU - Fonseca, R. A.

AU - Friebel, F.

AU - Garolfi, L.

AU - Gessner, S.

AU - Gorgisyan, I.

AU - Gorn, A. A.

AU - Granados, E.

AU - Grulke, O.

AU - Gschwendtner, E.

AU - Hansen, J.

AU - Helm, A.

AU - Henderson, J. R.

AU - Hüther, M.

AU - Ibison, M.

AU - Jensen, L.

AU - Lotov, K. V.

AU - Sosedkin, A. P.

AU - Spitsyn, R. I.

AU - Шалимова, Ирина Александровна

AU - Туев, Петр Викторович

AU - Минаков, Владимир Алексеевич

N1 - Funding Information: (numbers NRF-2015R1D1A1A01061074 and NRF-2016R1A5A1013277); the Portuguese FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, through grants CERN/FIS-TEC/0032/2017, PTDC-FIS-PLA-2940-2014, UID/FIS/50010/2013 and SFRH/IF/01635/2015; NSERC and CNRC for TRIUMF’s contribution; and the Research Council of Norway. M. Wing acknowledges the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and DESY, Hamburg. For their advice and contributions to the development of the magnetic spectrometer, we acknowledge B. Biskup, P. La Penna and M. Quattri. A. Petrenko acknowledges G. Demeter (Wigner Institute, Budapest) for calculating the rubidium ionization probability at AWAKE. F. Keeble acknowledges the operators of the CLEAR facility for their assistance during the calibration of the spectrometer. The AWAKE collaboration acknowledge the SPS team for proton delivery. Funding Information: Acknowledgements All authors are members of the AWAKE Collaboration. This work was supported in part by: a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant RPG-2017-143 and by STFC (AWAKE-UK, Cockroft Institute core and UCL consolidated grants), UK; the Russian Science Foundation (project number 14-50-00080) for simulations of oblique injection performed by Budker INP group; a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft project grant PU 213-6/1 ‘Three-dimensional quasi-static simulations of beam self-modulation for plasma wakefield acceleration’; the National Research Foundation of Korea. Publisher Copyright: © 2018, Springer Nature Limited.

PY - 2018/9/20

Y1 - 2018/9/20

N2 - High-energy particle accelerators have been crucial in providing a deeper understanding of fundamental particles and the forces that govern their interactions. To increase the energy of the particles or to reduce the size of the accelerator, new acceleration schemes need to be developed. Plasma wakefield acceleration1–5, in which the electrons in a plasma are excited, leading to strong electric fields (so called ‘wakefields’), is one such promising acceleration technique. Experiments have shown that an intense laser pulse6–9 or electron bunch10,11 traversing a plasma can drive electric fields of tens of gigavolts per metre and above—well beyond those achieved in conventional radio-frequency accelerators (about 0.1 gigavolt per metre). However, the low stored energy of laser pulses and electron bunches means that multiple acceleration stages are needed to reach very high particle energies5,12. The use of proton bunches is compelling because they have the potential to drive wakefields and to accelerate electrons to high energy in a single acceleration stage13. Long, thin proton bunches can be used because they undergo a process called self-modulation14–16, a particle–plasma interaction that splits the bunch longitudinally into a series of high-density microbunches, which then act resonantly to create large wakefields. The Advanced Wakefield (AWAKE) experiment at CERN17–19 uses high-intensity proton bunches—in which each proton has an energy of 400 gigaelectronvolts, resulting in a total bunch energy of 19 kilojoules—to drive a wakefield in a ten-metre-long plasma. Electron bunches are then injected into this wakefield. Here we present measurements of electrons accelerated up to two gigaelectronvolts at the AWAKE experiment, in a demonstration of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration. Measurements were conducted under various plasma conditions and the acceleration was found to be consistent and reliable. The potential for this scheme to produce very high-energy electron bunches in a single accelerating stage20 means that our results are an important step towards the development of future high-energy particle accelerators21,22.

AB - High-energy particle accelerators have been crucial in providing a deeper understanding of fundamental particles and the forces that govern their interactions. To increase the energy of the particles or to reduce the size of the accelerator, new acceleration schemes need to be developed. Plasma wakefield acceleration1–5, in which the electrons in a plasma are excited, leading to strong electric fields (so called ‘wakefields’), is one such promising acceleration technique. Experiments have shown that an intense laser pulse6–9 or electron bunch10,11 traversing a plasma can drive electric fields of tens of gigavolts per metre and above—well beyond those achieved in conventional radio-frequency accelerators (about 0.1 gigavolt per metre). However, the low stored energy of laser pulses and electron bunches means that multiple acceleration stages are needed to reach very high particle energies5,12. The use of proton bunches is compelling because they have the potential to drive wakefields and to accelerate electrons to high energy in a single acceleration stage13. Long, thin proton bunches can be used because they undergo a process called self-modulation14–16, a particle–plasma interaction that splits the bunch longitudinally into a series of high-density microbunches, which then act resonantly to create large wakefields. The Advanced Wakefield (AWAKE) experiment at CERN17–19 uses high-intensity proton bunches—in which each proton has an energy of 400 gigaelectronvolts, resulting in a total bunch energy of 19 kilojoules—to drive a wakefield in a ten-metre-long plasma. Electron bunches are then injected into this wakefield. Here we present measurements of electrons accelerated up to two gigaelectronvolts at the AWAKE experiment, in a demonstration of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration. Measurements were conducted under various plasma conditions and the acceleration was found to be consistent and reliable. The potential for this scheme to produce very high-energy electron bunches in a single accelerating stage20 means that our results are an important step towards the development of future high-energy particle accelerators21,22.

KW - BEAM

KW - AWAKE

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053505590&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=35737783

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-018-0485-4

DO - 10.1038/s41586-018-0485-4

M3 - Article

C2 - 30188496

AN - SCOPUS:85053505590

VL - 561

SP - 363

EP - 367

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7723

M1 - 5

ER -