IPAC'25 - the 16th International Particle Accelerator Conference

Development of the capillary discharge plasma source at UCLA

TUPS117

3 Jun 2025, 16:00

2h

Exhibiton Hall A _Salmon (TWTC)

Poster Presentation MC3.A22 Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Tuesday Poster Session

Speaker

Pratik Manwani (University of California, Los Angeles)

Description

At UCLA, we’ve developed a versatile capillary discharge plasma source for plasma wakefield experiments at the MITHRA and AWA facilities. This compact device, with an adjustable length and a 3-mm aperture, is designed to transmit high-aspect-ratio beams and generate plasmas across a wide density range. Its tunable density allows us to explore the shift from linear to nonlinear plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) in detail. Recently, we compared the performance of thyratron and solid-state switches, using an interferometric diagnostic system to measure the resulting plasma densities and these results are presented.

Funding Agency

This work was performed with support of the US Dept. of Energy, Division of High Energy Physics, under contract no. DE-SC0017648 and DESC0009914.