Roadmap to the Future

Abstract

Most particle accelerators today are expensive devices found only in the largest laboratories, industries, and hospitals. Using techniques developed nearly a century ago, the limiting performance of these accelerators is often traceable to material limitations, power source capabilities, and the cost tolerance of the application. Advanced accelerator concepts a aim to increase the gradient of accelerators by orders of magnitude, using new power sources (e.g. lasers and relativistic beams) and new materials (e.g. dielectrics, metamaterials, and plasmas). Worldwide, research in this area has grown steadily in intensity since the 1980s, resulting in demonstrations of accelerating gradients that are orders of magnitude higher than for conventional techniques. While research is still in the early stages, these techniques have begun to demonstrate the potential to radically change accelerators, making them much more compact, and extending the reach of these tools of science into the angstrom and attosecond realms. Maturation of these techniques into robust, engineered devices will require sustained interdisciplinary, collaborative R&D and coherent use of test infrastructure worldwide. The outcome can potentially transform how accelerators are used.

The socio-economic impact of a breakthrough in the particle accelerators’ technology: A research agenda

“…(ii ) Technological forecasting analysis. [8] scenarios, conditional to existing information [6,31]. The Delphi method involves multi-round forecasting challenges where experts provide initial forecasts and then adjust their initial guesses based on feedbacks they receive.…”

“…While new giant machines based on the evolution of existing technology are under study [39], such as the Future Circular Collider [22] or the International Linear Collider [26], new concepts are explored for smaller and less costly machines. One example is plasma wakefield acceleration, with experimentation currently going on in several major laboratories, such as those involved in the EuPRAXIA project [15], in the AWAKE collaboration at CERN [2,5] and in different projects in the US [8]. There are several other competing ideas for advanced accelerators and it is still uncertain when and which of these new technologies will become available.…”

Development and high-power testing of an X -band dielectric-loaded power extractor

“…The measurement results agree well with the theoretical calculation of the uniform section by Eqn. 1 To coherently enhance the wakefield from a multibunch train generated by the AWA 1.3 GHz rf linac, the interval between each bunch should be 1/11.69 × 9=769.9 ps which is 0.7 ps longer than the nominal value. The small offset can be compensated for by launching the bunches in the photocathode rf gun every 360.3 • instead of every 360 • .…”

“…The single bunch (bunch No.1), the 2bunch train (bunch No.1-2), the 4-bunch train (bunch No. [1][2][3][4], and the 8-bunch train (bunch No.1-8) were applied successively to increase the flat-top duration. With each bunch train configuration, the charge was slowly increased from zero to the maximum value (50 nC for the single bunch, 100 nC for the 2-bunch train, 195 nC for the 4-bunch train, and 360 nC for the 8-bunch train) to increase the power level, as illustrated in Fig.…”

“…The Advanced Accelerator Concepts (AAC) field conducts long-term research for a future large-scale collider with substantially higher energy and significantly lower cost than those can be achieved with current accelerator technology [1,2]. Over the last several decades four schemes have been intensely investigated.…”