Novel Accelerator
Several novel acceleration schemes are currently under consideration. In particular dielectric laser acceleration and particle driven plasma wakefield acceleration are two schemes that show immense promise for innovation of affordable and compact accelerators for essentially all applications where ‘classic’ RF accelerators are currently used.
However, significant R&D is still required before beams with a quality that matches the one obtained with more conventional techniques can be provided. The QUASAR Group is carrying out studies into the numerical and experimental optimization of dielectric grating structures.
Furthermore the group is contributing to an international effort to accelerate an electron beam to the TeV energy regime in a single plasma section within the AWAKE project. Our work incudes modification of all important grating parameters, studies into different materials, as well as investigations into using THz radiation for generation of the accelerating field with colleagues at the University of Manchester, from Tech-X UK and STFC within the AWAKE-UK collaboration.
Currently involved QUASARs:
Selected publications:
A. Aimidula, M. A. Bake, F. Wan, B. S. Xie, C. P. Welsch, G. Xia, O. Mete, M. Uesaka, Y. Matsumura, M. Yoshida, and K. Koyama, 'Numerically optimized structures for dielectric asymmetric dual-grating laser accelerators', Physics of Plasmas, Vol.21, Issue 2 (2014) (1.4866020)
A. Aimidula, C.P. Welsch, G. Xia, K. Koyama, M. Uesaka, M. Yoshida, O. Mete, Y. Matsumura, 'Numerical investigations into fiber laser based dielectric reverse dual-grating accelerator', Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A (2013) (2013.10.083)
G. Xia, O. Mete, A. Aimidula, C. Welsch, S. Chattopadhyay, S. Mandry, M. Wing, 'Collider design issues based on proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration', Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A (2013) (2013.11.006)
G. Xia, D.Angal-Kalinin, J.Clarke, J.Smith, E.Cormier-Michel, J.Jones, P.H.Williams, J.W.Mckenzie, B.L.Militsyn, K.Hanahoe, O.Mete, A.Aimidula, C. Welsch, 'A plasmawakefield acceleration experiment using CLARA beam', Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A (2013) (2013.10.092)