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FLASHForward X-2: Towards beam quality preservation in a plasma booster

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 909; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.nima.2018.02.063

1872-9576

V. Libov, Alexander Aschikhin, John Dale, Richard D’Arcy, Kai Ludwig, A. Martínez de la Ossa, Timon Mehrling, Jan-Hendrik Roeckemann, L. Schaper, B. Schmidt, S. Schröder, S. Wesch, Johann Zemella, Jens Osterhoff,

Nuclear Physics and Applications

Beam quality preservation in the external injection scheme is one of the key missing milestones towards staging of plasma-wakefield accelerators, a prerequisite for their utilisation in particle physics or other applications requiring high energy beams. This topic will be studied at FLASHForward, a unique beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration facility currently under construction at DESY (Hamburg, Germany), in the frame of the FLASHForward X-2 experiment. High-quality 1 GeV-class electron beams from the free-electron laser FLASH with μm-emittances, kA-scale currents, and less than 100 fs durations will be utilised to generate driver–witness pairs by using a mask in a dispersive section. In this contribution the physics case and the current status of the FLASHForward X-2 experiment are reviewed. The experimental installation is described, with a focus on the electron beamline. Electron beam dynamics and particle-in-cell simulations are presented.