Making Big Physics Small - Road to a TeV Collider based on Plasma Acceleration

Accelerator-based experiments have produced key breakthroughs in our understanding of the physical world.  New accelerators, to explore the frontiers of Terascale Physics, appear possible, based on concepts developed over the last three decades in multi-disciplinary endeavors.  The Laser and Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerator is one concept that has made spectacular advances in the last few years.  In this scheme, electrons or positrons gain energy by surfing the electric field of a plasma wave that is produced by the passage of an intense laser pulse or an electron beam through the plasma. Laser-driven plasma accelerators are now routinely producing several hundred MeV energy high quality electron beams in a plasma structure that is only a few millimeters in length. Beam-driven plasma accelerators have shown greater than 40 GeV energy gains in a meter scale plasma accelerator. This talk reviews the principles of this technique and prognosticates how this scheme for particle acceleration is likely to impact science and technology in the future.

About the Speaker: 
Prof. Chandrasekhar Joshi is a distinguished professor of electrical engineering and the director of the Neptune facility for advanced accelerator research at UCLA. His research interests are in plasma physics and lasers and electromagnetics covering high-power lasers, nonlinear optics of plasmas, laser acceleration of particles, and laser fusion. Some of his major contributions include the first experimental demonstration of four-wave mixing, stimualted Raman forward instability and resonant self-focusing, Prof. Joshi has won several awards that include APS-Maxwell prize, the advanced accelerator concepts prize and IEEE-particle accelerator science and technology award.