EXPERIMENTAL PLASMA WAKE-FIELD ACCELERATION PROJECT AT THE VEPP-5 INJECTION COMPLEX

The project of an experimental facility based on the VEPP-5 injection complex is described. Due to a good quality of electron or positron beams and special beam preparation system, the facility opens several possibilities for studies of the plasma wakefield acceleration: high peak beam currents, arbitrary beam profiles, long term beam- plasma interaction (up to the full driver depletion), and precise beam diagnostics. Various wakefield regimes can be experimentally demonstrated and studied: the efficient blow-out regime with a low energy spread and high ac- celeration rate (up to several GeV per meter); multibunch regime; long bunch instabilities; beam self-organization in plasma; plasma lens. If successfully realized, this exper- iment becomes a solid argument for feasibility of a high- energy collider based upon the plasma wakefield accelera- tion. To demonstrate the efficient blowout regime, a high- quality high-energy electron beam from a conventional accelerator must be longitudinally compressed, properly shaped, and passed through a plasma section that is long enough to completely decelerate some parts of the driver. All this possibilities will be available at the experimental facility based on the VEPP-5 injection complex. The ex- perimental project itself and the expected results obtained with computer simulations are reported in this paper.