nan E.N.Shaposhnikova

Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration: a path to the future of high-energy particle physics

New acceleration technology is mandatory for the future elucidation of fundamental particles and their interactions. A promising approach is to exploit the properties of plasmas. Past research has focused on creating large-amplitude plasma waves by injecting an intense laser pulse or an electron bunch into the plasma. However, the maximum energy gain of electrons accelerated in a single plasma stage is limited by the energy of the driver. Proton bunches are the most promising drivers of wakefields to accelerate electrons to the TeV energy scale in a single stage. An experimental program at CERN—the AWAKE experiment—has been launched to study in detail the important physical processes and to demonstrate the power of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration. Here we review the physical principles and some experimental considerations for a future proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerator.

Space charge and electron clouds issues

We present here the relevant space charge issues for long-term beam storage. The impact on the choice of the working point along with the prediction of the beam loss is discussed for the example of the SIS100. We present a first estimate on the effect of self consistency and discuss the equivalence of space charge, and electron clouds induced ”quasi” incoherent effect.

Ions for LHC: Beam Physics and Engineering Challenges

The first phase of the heavy ion physics program at the LHC aims to provide lead-lead collisions at energies of 5.5 TeV per colliding nucleon pair and ion-ion luminosity of 1027cm-2s-1. The transformation of CERN’s ion injector complex (Linac3-LEIR-PS-SPS) presents a number of beam physics and engineering challenges, which are described in this paper. In the LHC itself, there are fundamental performance limitations due to various beam loss mechanisms. To study these without risk of damage there will be an initial period of operation with a reduced number of nominal intensity bunches. While reducing the work required to commission the LHC with ions in 2008, this will still enable early physics discoveries.