Tomographic Visualization of Electron-Beam-Driven Plasma Wakefield Accelerators

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Plasma acceleration is a cutting-edge technique for accelerating charged particles such as electrons using the electric field associated with a plasma structure, such as an electron plasma wave. The plasma structure is created using either ultra-short laser pulses or particle beams. This technique offers a way to build high performance particle accelerators of much smaller size than conventional accelerator techniques. The goal of this award is visualizing evolving plasma wakefield accelerator structures generated by intense GeV electron bunches. The single-shot visualization and control techniques developed and refined through this research can impact a wide cross section of plasma science. The visualization of electron beam driven wakes will support development of "plasma afterburners", an emerging technology for doubling the energy of conventional linear colliders. These methods will also promote more reliable tabletop plasma-based accelerators, which are useful as compact coherent x-ray sources for biological, chemical, and medical research, injectors for conventional accelerators, and medical accelerators. Finally the proposed research will train a research associate, a Ph.D. student, and an undergraduate from UT-San Antonio, which ranks 4th in the nation in number of undergraduate degrees awarded to Hispanics.The proposed award will provide the first direct laboratory visualization of electron-beam driven plasma wakes, and will advance new, unique approaches to visualizing rapidly evolving relativistic electron-beam-plasma interactions that the PI pioneered. They will complement, benchmark and validate computer simulations in understanding the physics of electron-beam driven wakes, and in developing strategies to optimize and scale plasma wakefield accelerators.