Speaker
Description
Plasma wakefield acceleration offers high field gradients, typically on the order of 10 to 100x larger than conventional RF cavities. Currently available proton beams have sufficient energy to maintain these wakefields over significant distances, allowing a witness bunch of leptons to be accelerated to the energy frontier, with the plasma acting to mediate energy transfer from the proton driver to a lepton witness. The ALiVE project is pursuing the use of a short proton drive beam, which offers the possibility to significantly increase the the beam—beam energy-transfer efficiency, opening the path to collider applications. A Fixed Field Accelerator has been proposed for the proton driver, due to its ability to provide short bunches with a high repetition rate. Here, we present an overview of the ALiVE scheme, including the outline of the proton driver design and initial plasma simulations which demonstrate the acceleration of an electron bunch from injection to the energy frontier. We further discuss the challenges that nonlinear effects in plasma wakefield accelerators represent in extending acceleration towards higher energy, as well as progress on the other accelerator facility components.