First emittance measurement of the beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerated electron beam

Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron beams to GeV energies within centimeter distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, is indeed able to sustain huge electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing witness bunch, which was experimentally demonstrated on multiple occasions. Thus, the main focus of the current research is being shifted towards achieving a high quality of the beam after the plasma acceleration. In this paper we present a beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment, where initially preformed high-quality witness beam was accelerated inside the plasma and characterized. In this experiment the witness beam quality after the acceleration was maintained on high level, with 0.2% final energy spread and 3.8 μm resulting normalized transverse emittance after the acceleration. In this article, for the first time to our knowledge, the emittance of the plasma wakefield accelerated beam was directly measure

First emittance measurement of the beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerated electron beam

Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron beams to GeV energies within centimetre distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, is indeed able to sustain huge electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing witness bunch, which was experimentally demonstrated on multiple occasions. Thus, the main focus of the current research is being shifted towards achieving a high quality of the beam after the plasma acceleration. In this letter we present beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment, where initially preformed high-quality witness beam was accelerated inside the plasma and characterized. In this experiment the witness beam quality after the acceleration was maintained on high level, with $0.2\%$ final energy spread and $3.8~\mu m$ resulting normalized transverse emittance after the acceleration. In this article, for the first time to our knowledge, the emittance of the PWFA beam was directly measured

Energy spread minimization in a beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator

Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron bunches to gigaelectronvolt energies within centimetre distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, generates large electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing witness bunch making possible the realization of laboratory-scale applications ranging from high-energy colliders to ultra-bright light sources. So far several experiments have demonstrated a significant acceleration but the resulting beam quality, especially the energy spread, is still far from state of the art conventional accelerators. Here we show the results of a beam-driven plasma acceleration experiment where we used an electron bunch as a driver followed by an ultra-short witness. The experiment demonstrates, for the first time, an innovative method to achieve an ultra-low energy spread of the accelerated witness of about 0.1%. This is an order of magnitude smaller than what has been obtained so far. The result can lead to a major breakthrough toward the optimization of the plasma acceleration process and its implementation in forthcoming compact machines for user-oriented applications

First emittance measurement of the beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerated electron beam

Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron beams to GeV energies within centimeter distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, is indeed able to sustain huge electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing witness bunch, which was experimentally demonstrated on multiple occasions. Thus, the main focus of the current research is being shifted towards achieving a high quality of the beam after the plasma acceleration. In this paper we present a beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment, where initially preformed high-quality witness beam was accelerated inside the plasma and characterized. In this experiment the witness beam quality after the acceleration was maintained on high level, with 0.2% final energy spread and 3.8 μm resulting normalized transverse emittance after the acceleration. In this article, for the first time to our knowledge, the emittance of the plasma wakefield accelerated beam was directly measured

Energy spread minimization in a beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator

Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron bunches to gigaelectronvolt energies within centimetre distances. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, generates large electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing witness bunch, enabling the realization of laboratory-scale applications ranging from high-energy colliders to ultrabright light sources. So far, several experiments have demonstrated large accelerations but the resulting beam quality, particularly the energy spread, is still far from state-of-the-art conventional accelerators. Here we show the results of a beam-driven plasma acceleration experiment where we used an electron bunch as a driver followed by an ultrashort witness bunch. By setting a positive energy chirp on the witness bunch, its longitudinal phase space is rotated during acceleration, resulting in an ultralow energy spread that is even lower than the spread at the plasma entrance. This result will significantly impact the optimization of the plasma acceleration process and its implementation in forthcoming compact machines for user-oriented applications