A proposed experiment on the proton driven plasma wakefield acceleration

Simulations have shown that a high energy, short and intense proton beam can drive a large amplitude plasma wave and accelerate an electron beam to the energy frontier in a single plasma channel. To verify this novel idea, a proof-of-principle demonstration experiment is now being planned. The idea is to use the available high energy proton beams either from the Proton Synchrotron (PS) or the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN, to shoot the beam into a plasma cell and to excite the plasma wakefield. A strong density modulation due to the excited plasma wakefield is produced for a long drive beam and this modulated beam in turn produces a high electric field. The proposed experimental setup is introduced in this paper. The interactions between the plasma and the proton beam are simulated and the results are presented. The compression of an SPS bunch is also discussed.