FLASHForward: Plasma-wakefield accelerator science for high-average-power applications
Abstract
The FLASHForward experimental facility is a high-performance test-bed for precision plasma-wakefield research, aiming to accelerate high-quality electron beams to GeV-levels in a few centimetres of ionised gas. The plasma is created by ionising gas in a gas cell either by a high-voltage discharge or a high-intensity laser pulse. The electrons to be accelerated will either be injected internally from the plasma background or externally from the FLASH superconducting RF front end. In both cases the wakefield will be driven by electron beams provided by the FLASH gun and linac modules operating with a 10 Hz macro-pulse structure, generating 1.25 GeV, 1 nC electron bunches at up to 3 MHz micro-pulse repetition rates. At full capacity, this FLASH bunch-train structure corresponds to 30 kW of average power, orders of magnitude higher than drivers available to other state-of-the-art LWFA and PWFA experiments. This high-power functionality means FLASHForward is the only plasma-wakefield facility in the world with the immediate capability to develop, explore, and benchmark high-average-power plasma-wakefield research essential for next-generation facilities. The operational parameters and technical highlights of the experiment are discussed, as well as the scientific goals and high-average-power outlook.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1905.03693,
title = {FLASHForward: Plasma-wakefield accelerator science for high-average-power applications},
author = {R. D'Arcy and A. Aschikhin and S. Bohlen and G. Boyle and T. Brümmer and J. Chappell and S. Diederichs and B. Foster and M. J. Garland and L. Goldberg and P. Gonzalez and S. Karstensen and A. Knetsch and P. Kuang and V. Libov and K. Ludwig and A. Martinez de la Ossa and F. Marutzky and M. Meisel and T. J. Mehrling and P. Niknejadi and K. Poder and P. Pourmoussavi and M. Quast and J. -H. Röckemann and L. Schaper and B. Schmidt and S. Schröder and J. -P. Schwinkendorf and B. Sheeran and G. Tauscher and S. Wesch and M. Wing and P. Winkler and M. Zeng and J. Osterhoff},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.03693},
year = {2019}
}