A proposed demonstration of an experiment of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration based on CERN SPS

The proton bunch-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) has been proposed as an approach to accelerate an electron beam to the TeV energy regime in a single plasma section. An experimental program has been recently proposed to demonstrate the capability of proton-driven PWFA by using existing proton beams from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) accelerator complex. At present, a spare Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) tunnel, having a length of 600 m, could be used for this purpose. The layout of the experiment is introduced. Particle-in-cell simulation results based on realistic SPS beam parameters are presented. Simulations show that working in a self-modulation regime, the wakefield driven by an SPS beam can accelerate an externally injected ∼10 MeV electrons to ∼2 GeV in a 10-m plasma, with a plasma density of 7 A - 10 14 cm -3. © 2012 Cambridge University Press.