Speaker
Description
In the recent decades, there has been an increased interest towards scaling down linear accelerators. The Dielectric Terahertz (THz) Accelerator, developed within the scope of the TWAC European project, is a technology that aims to tend toward that goal. Here, we introduce the TWAC project and report on the preliminary experimental progress. The cornerstones to the project are: (i) the dielectric accelerator ZITA design, (ii) the THz-ZITA coupler design, (iii) the generation and characterization of a proper THz pulse, and (iv) electron diagnostic schemes post-acceleration. The driving peak field for electron acceleration in this accelerator is directly related to the THz source. On TWAC, we expect to obtain a high accelerating field in the dielectric through a multicycle THz pulse. While first years of the project were mainly dedicated to the conceptualization of the experiment, recent progress on the validation of subsystems include: the phase velocity measurement of the waveguides, THz source characterization of the radial polarization, experimental focusing and transmission of a sub-ps 10 MeV electron bunch through the THz dielectric waveguide, and validation of dosimeters for FLASH radiotherapy under ultra-high dose rate. We will present the experimental validation of these subsystems while the THz-driven electron acceleration remains to be finalized.
| Working group | WG4 |
|---|