The electron accelerator for the AWAKE experiment at CERN

• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2016.02.025
• Publication Date: 2016-02-17T17:34:00Z
• Authors: K. Pepitone; S. Doebert; G. Burt; E. Chevallay; N. Chritin; C. Delory; V. Fedosseev; Ch. Hessler; G. McMonagle; O. Mete; V. Verzilov; R. Apsimon
• Keywords: 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Charged particle beams in accelerators; Electron gun; Diagnostics; 7. Clean energy; Accelerators

AbstractThe AWAKE collaboration prepares a proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment using the SPS beam at CERN. A long proton bunch extracted from the SPS interacts with a high power laser and a 10m long rubidium vapour plasma cell to create strong wakefields allowing sustained electron acceleration. The electron bunch to probe these wakefields is supplied by a 20MeV electron accelerator. The electron accelerator consists of an RF-gun and a short booster structure. This electron source should provide beams with intensities between 0.1 and 1nC, bunch lengths between 0.3 and 3ps and an emittance of the order of 2mm mrad. The wide range of parameters should cope with the uncertainties and future prospects of the planned experiments. The layout of the electron accelerator, its instrumentation and beam dynamics simulations are presented.