Abstract
Next-generation plasma-based accelerators can push electron bunches to gigaelectronvolt energies within centimetre distances1,2. The plasma, excited by a driver pulse, generates large electric fields that can efficiently accelerate a trailing witness bunch3,4,5, enabling the realization of laboratory-scale applications ranging from high-energy colliders6 to ultrabright light sources7. So far, several experiments have demonstrated large accelerations8,9,10 but the resulting beam quality, particularly the energy spread, is still far from state-of-the-art conventional accelerators. Here we show the results of a beam-driven plasma acceleration experiment where we used an electron bunch as a driver followed by an ultrashort witness bunch. By setting a positive energy chirp on the witness bunch, its longitudinal phase space is rotated during acceleration, resulting in an ultralow energy spread that is even lower than the spread at the plasma entrance. This result will significantly impact the optimization of the plasma acceleration process and its implementation in forthcoming compact machines for user-oriented applications.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the EU Commission under the Seventh Framework Program under grant agreement number 312453-EuCARD-2, the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 653782 (EuPRAXIA) and the INFN by the GRANT73/PLADIP grant. The work of A.Z. was partially supported by the ISF foundation. We thank all of the machine operators involved in the experimental run, D. Pellegrini for the realization of the high-voltage discharge pulser and M. Del Franco for providing the layout of the SPARC_LAB photo-injector.
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M.F. and R.P. planned and managed the experiment with input from all co-authors. R.P. carried out the data analysis. A.B. provided the plasma characterization. A.C and V.S. realized and managed the beam diagnostics. A.D.D. provided numerical simulations for the beam–plasma interaction. R.P. and A.Z. wrote the manuscript. All authors were involved in the experiment, extensively discussed the results and reviewed the manuscript.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Chirp manipulation.
Witness energy chirp (blue line) obtained at the plasma entrance by varying the accelerator compression phase. The inset shows the resulting LPS for several phases. The vertical axis reports the energy of each particle with respect to the central energy. The chirp value is obtained by performing a linear fit on each LPS.
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Pompili, R., Alesini, D., Anania, M.P. et al. Energy spread minimization in a beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator. Nat. Phys. 17, 499–503 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01116-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01116-9
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