Speaker
Description
The Electron Ion Collider (EIC) [1] is presently under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and will collide electrons with an energy of up to 18 GeV with hadrons of up to 275 GeV. In this work we evaluate the feasibility of using a proton-driven plasma wakefield in a tens-of-metres-long plasma stage to accelerate electron bunches to full energy for injection into the EIC Electron Storage Ring. Particle-in-cell simulations are used to identify a scheme which allows the acceleration of electron bunches with high charge and low energy spread, building on previous studies which investigated the potential energy gain [2].
The RHIC “BLUE RING”, which accelerates hadrons in the same direction as the electrons of the EIC, can be exploited to drive the plasma wakefields, offering the potential to significantly reduce the capital cost of the EIC facility. We show that for moderate compression of the drive bunch from 5cm to 1cm, acceleration to the required electron energy can be achieved by exploiting the self-modulation of the proton beam, as harnessed by the AWAKE project at CERN [3]. For strong compression to an RMS beam length of 1 mm, acceleration can be achieved by a single unmodulated proton bunch as in the ALiVE scheme [4,5], opening the path to higher energy-transfer efficiency and an increase in the electron charge which can be accelerated.
Footnotes
- EIC CDR, BNL Internal Report (2021)
- Chappell et al., proc. DIS2019 (2019)
- AWAKE Collaboration, Nature (2018)
- Farmer et al., New J. Phys. (2024)
- Caldwell et al., input to the EPPSU (2025)
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