Advanced Accelerator Test Facility (AATF) upgrade plan

The principles of wakefield acceleration employing structures (cavity, dielectric) and plasmas as wakefield devices have been successfully demonstrated using the AATF at Argonne National Laboratory. Due to the limited driver electron pulse intensity and relatively long pulse length, only modest accelerating gradients were observed. In order to study the wakefield effects in much greater detail and demonstrate the feasibility of a wakefield accelerator for high energy physics, construction of a laser photocathode injector on the existing 20-MeV Chem-Linac to produce very intense and short electron pulses is being considered. The laser photocathode design and computer simulation of its performance are described. The experiments performed using the upgraded facility are discussed.<
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