Workshop pushes proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration

PPA09, a workshop held at CERN on proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration, has launched discussions about a first demonstration experiment using a proton beam. Steve Myers, CERN’s director for Accelerators and Technology, opened the event and described its underlying motivation. Reaching higher-energy collisions for future particle-physics experiments beyond the LHC requires a novel accelerator technology, and “shooting a high-energy proton beam into a plasma" could be a promising first step. The workshop, which brought together participants from Germany, Russia, Switzerland, the UK and the US, was supported by the EuCARD AccNet accelerator-science network.