AWAKE achieves first ever acceleration of electrons in a proton-driven plasma wave
Lancaster researchers have contributed to a major break-through at CERN. In a paper published in the journal Nature, the AWAKE collaboration at CERN reports the first ever successful acceleration of electrons using a wave generated by protons zipping through a plasma. The acceleration obtained over a given distance is already several times higher than that of conventional technologies currently available for particle accelerators. First proposed in the 1970s, the use of plasma waves, or ‘wakefields’, has the potential to drastically reduce the size of accelerators in the next several decades. AWAKE, which stands for “Advanced WAKEfield Experiment”, is a proof-of-principle compact accelerator project for accelerating electrons to very high energies over short distances. Accelerating particles…