Plasma Acceleration

Plasmas can sustain electric fields far beyond the breakdown limit of unionized matter. This property is utilized in plasma-based charged-particle accelerators to realize acceleration gradients orders of magnitude beyond the theoretical and practical capabilities of modern metallic-cavity-based radiofrequency (RF) accelerators, resulting in significantly decreased acceleration lengths for the same particle energy: GeV beams from plasma have been generated over centimeter acceleration distances. Considering the kilometer scale of GeV RF accelerators and their major importance to many research fields such as particle physics, photon science, material science, and, potentially, health, it becomes intuitively clear that a drastic reduction of these devices in size and cost will result in an increased proliferation of accelerator technology and a disruptive increase of its scientific impact with possible installations emerging in universities, companies, hospitals, and in developing countries.

The main audience of the school are Master and PhD students as well as early-career postdoctoral researchers.

Further information