Experimental Study of Plasma Wakefield Acceleration at VELA/CLARA Facility at Daresbury Laboratory

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Plasma accelerators have made tremendous progress in the last few decades since the inception of the idea from Tajima and Dawson. Nowadays, laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) could achieve multi-GeV level, mono-energetic electrons through millimeter to centimeter plasma cells. Electron beam driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) has demonstrated energy doubling for an ultra relativistic 42 GeV electron beam in a meter long plasma structure and recently realized the high efficiency beam acceleration at SLAC FACET facility. The accelerating gradients measured in these experiments can be in the range of 10-100 GeV/m, which are 3-4 orders of magnitude larger than that in todays' conventional RF-based particle accelerators. Since plasma wakefield accelerators hold great promise to miniature the future energy frontier machines, the research on the key issues, e.g. the ultrahigh accelerating gradients, plasma lens (plasma focusing), high transformer ratio, plasma instabilities of the plasma wakefield accelerators are critical for the new generation facility such as compact light sources and colliders based on this novel acceleration scheme. Working together with colleagues from ASTeC and the University of Strathclyde, we are currently preparing for the first UK based beam driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment at Darebury laboratory using the VELA/CLARA beam. The first experiment will demonstrate the plasma lens strong focusing effect. The follow-up experiment will investigate other key issues as above-mentioned.The study will include full modelling of beam-plasma interaction, engineering design and manufacture of plasma cell, commissioning of the experimental facility and analysing the experimental data.