Emittance preservation in a plasma-wakefield accelerator

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50320-1
• Publication Date: 2024-07-19T17:01:24Z
• Authors: C. A. Lindstrøm; J. Beinortaitė; J. Björklund Sven...; L. Boulton; J. Chappell; S. Diederichs; B. Foster; J. M. Garland; P. González Caminal; G. Loisch; F. Peña; S. Schröder; M. Thévenet; S. Wesch; M. Wing; J. C. Wood; R. D’Arcy; J. Osterhoff
• Keywords: Plasma acceleration

Radio-frequency particle accelerators are engines of discovery, powering high-energy physics and photon science, but also large expensive due to their limited accelerating fields. Plasma-wakefield (PWFAs) provide orders-of-magnitude stronger fields in the charge-density wave behind a bunch travelling plasma, promising greatly reduced size cost. However, PWFAs can easily degrade beam quality bunches they accelerate. Emittance, which determines how tightly beams be focused, is critical for instance colliders free-electron lasers, particularly prone degradation. We demonstrate, first time, emittance preservation high-gradient high-efficiency PWFA while simultaneously preserving charge energy spread. This establishes that accelerate without degradation$\unicode{x2014}$essential boosters science multistage facilities compact colliders.