An electron injector for the Electron-Ion Collider based on proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration

by Mr John Farmer

Monday 23 Nov 2026, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Zurich

Plasma wakefield acceleration offers the potential for large accelerating gradients, although detailed plans for how these can be harnessed for specific applications have only recently been developed. Collider physics offers obvious synergies due to the need for high-energy particles and the overlap in accelerator expertise.

In this work, we describe an electron bunch injector scheme based on proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration for the Electron-Ion Collider. The proton bunches are assumed to have the same energy as those used in the EIC, and the polarized electron source is that used in the current EIC design. We describe the different elements required and give an estimate for the performance. Using a novel top-up injection scheme for electrons, the charge in the ring is accumulated over many injection events, avoiding deleterious beamloading in the proton-driven wakefield stage and allowing the polarization in the ring to be maintained. Our initial study indicates that for electron bunches at 10 GeV, 1160 bunches with charge of 19.3 nC can be accumulated and stored over a 10-hour period with an average polarization of 75.8%, representing 69% of the EIC design specification for charge and exceeding the specification for polarization. Paths to improve upon these results are identified.

Beyond the direct application of the scheme as an injector, applying concrete goals to plasma wakefield acceleration is a useful exercise to identify the limitations of current technological readiness and direct future research efforts.

 

Biography:

John did his PhD on simulation methods for laser-plasma interactions at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. He moved to Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf for his postdoc, where he started working on beam-driven wakefield acceleration in plasma and joined the AWAKE project in 2015. In 2019, he moved to the Max-Planck Institute for Physics to lead the simulation effort for acceleration in AWAKE Run 2c. He is now the deputy simulation coordinator for the AWAKE collaboration, and co-founder of the ALiVE project which investigates novel collider schemes based on plasma wakefield acceleration.