Status and Future Prospects for Beam Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration at FLASHForward

by Dr Lucas Schaper (DESY)

Friday 20 Nov 2015, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Berlin

Rm 2, Bldg 2a (DESY Hamburg)

The FLASHForward project at DESY provides a unique environment in which to conduct beam driven plasma wakefield experiments generating electron beams with energies exceeding 1.5 GeV in targets of a few centimetre length, ultimately with beams of sufficient quality to demonstrate gain in a free-electron laser. The stability and possibility of specifically tailored beam drivers which are generated by the superconducting RF-linac of FLASH together with the superb synchronisation between the electron beam and laser allows the electron beam quality resulting from different particle injection mechanisms into the generated wakefield, plasma internal or via eternal beam injection to be investigated. In addition maintaining the beam quality by controlled release of the plasma accelerated beams or their capturing can be examined, both crucial points for future developments of plasma based accelerators.